Today’s Focus

Run Easy

Planned Workout Description: 

Day 12 – Stryd Intro Plan – 30:00-minute recovery run

Where does this run/workout fit into my top 5 running priorities?

1. Be healthy and run relatively discomfort-free – Find training plans that work for me, use prehab and rehab routines to run healthy, and pay attention to what the body is attempting to tell me. Avoid the too much, too soon, too fast mentality.
2. Have fun with my running – running isn’t easy, but I want to enjoy it, not have it be another source of stress.
3. Geek out on running stuff. I love learning and trying new things (experiment to see what works and doesn’t work) – Running shoes, Stryd Ecosystems, tech, training methods, etc. Even if I am not writing reviews, I still love this part of the running experience.
4. Camaraderie – Enjoy the company of other runners, I run alone most of the time, so this is a treat when it happens.
5. Competition – Yes, racing and seeing how I compare to other runners and the runner I used to be.

Purpose: From Stryd’s Intro Plan.” Day 12 is here, and this is another recovery day. Tomorrow calls for a longer sustained effort that will cap off your training plan, so we recommend doing whatever is necessary today to help you feel your best heading into that day.

If you elect to run today, we recommend identifying your easy zone either in the Stryd mobile app or on Stryd PowerCenter and sticking to that range, so you do not generate any extra fatigue going into tomorrow’s hard effort.”

This run fits into the #1 to recover from yesterday’s harder tempo and rest up for tomorrow’s 5K time trial.

Morning Prehab

• 2 x 15 Straight Leg Eccentric Calf Drops each leg on the ladder
• 2 x 15 Bent Leg Eccentric Calf Drops each leg on the ladder
• 30 – Calf Raises both legs on the ladder
• 10 – single leg calf raises no support on the floor
• 20 x steps hip extensions

Warm-up: 

100-ups 

Run #1

• Course: Town Office 4.0 Miler
• Type: Day 12 – Stryd Intro Plan – 30:00-minute recovery run
• Distance: 4.06
• Duration: 38:54
• Power: 214

What I Actually Did Today: 

Did the run go as planned?

I went a little faster than the plan called for and made it into an easy run versus a recovery run, with a bit of a pick-up at the end. Not all that fast, for sure, but it felt good to be running more comfortably than I have been. I still do not have my old stride back, and the left Achilles has enough tightness to keep things slower than I would prefer.

However, coming back up both Blake and Stevens Hills, I didn’t feel all that bad, yes the pace was slower than I would want, but overall I felt strong coming up them. I even thought about doing an extra lap up, Philbrick, but I am really attempting to stay close to the training plan and not completely ignore it. It was bad enough that I did almost an extra 9:00 minutes (that extra mile), so I didn’t do it while I was tempted.

That is the kind of stuff that always gets me in trouble, doing more than the plan calls for or changing a recovery day into a tempo day (too often). That I feel good, so I can do more or go faster training versus being disciplined enough to trust and follow the plan.

Today’s run was more me focusing on thinking about things I needed to sort out with my running. In the end, I figured out that my ego got in the way of my priorities and reality. Which, for me at least, doesn’t usually work out all that well. It sure didn’t this time. 

I dug out the old running priority list that I put together pre-COVID and added it to my RunLog template to remind me of my running priorities.

Every damn day.

Variables that impacted the run:

Injuries/Niggles: The left Achilles was mostly just tightness this morning, which is still enough to keep me from attempting a regular stride. It made me more hopeful that it is moving in the correct direction.

Weather: Clear sky, 59°F, Feels like 55°F, Humidity 72%, Wind 7mph from N

Shoes: New Balance 1080v10 (Blue) – Did everything that I wanted comfortably.

Other Stuff

Michael Lin, a running buddy on Facebook, said it best and got me to thinking differently when he responded to my blog post the other day:

One thing I’ve learned over the years is my A-goal should be “don’t get injured or make existing injuries worse.”

This is one that I am going to keep to remind me of what is essential.

Stryd/Garmin conundrum

I got to looking at my Stryd footpod settings because something just didn’t seem quite correct with the mileage or paces from Stryd’s footpod since I got an update from Garmin for my FR245 about a month ago. I initially set it up as instructed here, but this morning when I looked at the settings, they were all off. With the rehab stuff going on, it wasn’t that important, and I didn’t really pay that much attention to it until today.

• 7. Scroll down and select ‘Speed.’
• 8. Scroll down to and select ‘Always.’ It was reset to Indoor
• 9. Scroll down and select ‘Distance.’
• 10. Scroll down to and select ‘Always.’ It was reset to Indoor
• 11. Scroll down to and select ‘Cal. Factor’.
• 12. Scroll down to and select ‘Disable.’ It was reset to enabled
• 13. Scroll down to ‘Set Value’ and confirm that it is 100.0. It was reset to 101.60

Which is totally weird and definitely not the settings that I had programmed into the watch. Something about that update a month ago screwed things up, and besides this issue, I am now having a helluva time getting the watch to reconnect to my iPhone whenever I charge it. Technology is great when it works but frustrating when it goes off on its own tangents and doesn’t do what you expect. Oh well, it just means that I will be checking the setting for the footpod a little more regularly, like after I charge the watch next time.

I wonder what differences this will make.