No Track Tuesday – June 22, 2021

How am I feeling today?

A bit of a blah start to the day. It is overcast outside, and sleeping in meant that I was behind in a few things. Gonna be one of those busy arse days, so just gotta suck it up and get to it.

Today’s Running Focus

Get it done

Planned Workout Description: 

Workout: Stryd 5K – Week 2, Day 2

Track Work out

• 1.0-mile warm-up
• 1.0-mile time trial
• .25 recovery
• 4 x .25 at whatever pace I can hold, with .25 recovery
• 4 x .13 at whatever pace I can hold, with .12 recovery
• 1.0-mile cool-down or if I am at Cony the Loop

Purpose:

I changed up the Stryd plan for today to my Fitness test. The Stryd plan called for a faster workout with 10×1:00 faster portions, so while this is a bit more intense, it is still a “speed” workout. When I am healthy, I attempt to do this run once a month, which gives me an excellent idea of where I am and what I need to work on. 

If the Achilles acts up too much, I have already given myself permission to shut it down and not be at all concerned about it. I am still in recovery mode, and this is to see where I am, not break or reinjure the body.

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

This workout is a fitness test to see how I am doing health-wise and to see if I can break 7:00 for the mile on the track and have some fun running faster, even if it hurts a little. I haven’t broken 7:00 in a few years in a time trial, so we will see how competitive I am, especially after the 5K time trial that I bombed out on. It is also an opportunity to see if the Reebok RunFast v1 works as well on the track as I remember.

Warm-up: 

No warm-up, just slow running

Run #1

• Course: No Track Tuesday on the Augusta Rail Trail
• Type: Time Trial
• Primary Surface: Tar
• Distance: 5.06
• Duration: 47:55
• Pace: 9:28
• Power: 204

What I Did Today: 

Did that workout go as planned?

When I got over to Cony, there was construction on the football field, so the track was closed, which meant that I needed to figure out an alternative. I wasn’t driving up to Waterville to use Colby’s track, so I figured that getting down to the Rail Trail was a reasonable substitution after thinking about it. It is primarily flat, and I don’t have to worry about traffic.

• · 1.0-mile warm-up (215) – The warm-up was easy, and I felt strong, but I had a feeling that the workout was going to end up being pretty tough.
• · 1.0-mile time trial (250) – I turned about .1 before the 1.0-mile point, a bunch of people were walking, and I didn’t want to be turning in the middle of them. This simple little change made a massive difference in the overall workout since the R/T distance markers didn’t line up with my distance splits after that. It was a seemingly small thing but made a big difference. The mile time trial was not a maximal effort, more like about 85 to 90%, the humidity got to me, and I didn’t have my best day mentally. However, I was able to get under an 8:00 minute pace, so some of the fitness is returning.
• · .25 recovery
• · 4 x .25 at whatever pace I can hold, with .25 recovery – I did pretty good the first two quarter-mile repeats and then blew up. I finished number three and somehow miscounted the repeats and started doing the shorter repeats one too early, which just screwed up everything.
• · 4 x .13 at whatever pace I can hold, with .12 recovery – I did three shorter repeats. I won’t say they were top quality, and the recoveries started with a walking progression back to running.
• · 1.0-mile cool-down – Things were so screwed by this time; I have no idea if I did a recovery segment or not. All I know is that I got to 5.0 miles and figured that was far enough this morning. Looking back, it was supposed to be over 6.0-miles total, so I blew off the cool-down mile.

Once I screwed things up, I lost any motivation to go harder. The heat/humidity was getting to me pretty badly, and I was happy just finishing the workout, whatever part of it that I managed to do.

Next Tuesday, I might have to look at the Messalonskee High School’s track to see if that is available. If not, I will wander over to the Colby track. There are plenty of tracks around the area, but I like the Cony track because I like the places to run around after getting the workout done. Oakland isn’t that nice a place to run beyond the school.

Variables that impacted the run:

Injuries/Niggles: Surprisingly, the left Achilles didn’t complain all that much. I didn’t do the morning exercises and wore my calf sleeves, both of which seemed to make it so that the Achilles didn’t grumble. That was kind of nice. I wore my Injinji socks, and that seemed to work nicely with the RunFasts. Especially since neither foot was complaining during or after the run.

Weather: Broken clouds, 74°F, Feels like 76°F, Humidity 78%, Wind 6mph from WNW. Nasty, sweatfest that made it look like I had gone swimming instead of running.

Shoes: Reebok RunFast v1 – No complaints, no issues, just put them on and forget about them. They gripped excellent on both the tar and sandy sections, and I could go as fast as I wanted without the shoes getting in the way. I remembered why I loved them so much when I had the other pair a couple of years ago. They are making a solid bid to be my “go faster” shoe for track workouts and 5K to 10K racing.

Other Stuff

Bennie’s Vet appointment went fine, and we were finally able to get some canning lids this afternoon. We have been looking for almost a month just for a couple of boxes. They have been in very short supply.