My biggest week....

Bake 3 hours @ 90 degrees and you have 1 tired zombie

 

I'm roughly halfway through my training plan for the Denver Marathon and this past week was one of my biggest weeks mileage wise ever.  I rolled over 25 miles with a 13 miler on Thursday, and I did not track the distance I ran on Saturday while chasing people up and down hills in Lakewood at Run For Your Lives.  I may have had a bigger week last year, but I certainly did not run 4 days during the week last year and volunteer for 3 hours of 90 degree heat-fueled zombie transformation.  If I did three days a week last year I was lucky.  So I wanted to look back at week one of my training and compare to this week to gauge the progress I have made.
Week 1:
Mon:  3 miles, easy pace
Tues:  3 miles, easy pace
Weds:  Strength/Core
Thurs:  3 miles, tempo pace
Fri:  Rest
Sat:  5 miles, long pace
Sun:  Cross training

11 miles total, with some biking, yoga, and weights/core exercises.  Now let's look at week 8:

Mon:  5K test run
Tues:  6 miles, race pace
Wed:  3 miles easy + Spartan Workout
Thurs:  13 miles, long pace

Fri:  Rest
Sat:  Run For Your Lives!
Sun:  Cross training
25 miles total (with probably 2 more miles of hill repeats on Saturday).

For the elites, and even the gazelles around Boulder, this is maybe not a lot of mileage, but for a mastodon like me, it's a lot.  And here's the great part - it felt great.  I have no more aches or pains than I had that first week.  In all honesty, I probably have fewer aches and pains than I had that first week.  I have only missed a couple of running workouts, which I think makes a huge difference.  I've not made every Wed/Sun workout, but I've done more of them than I did last year.  Halfway through training and I am feeling very positive about my progress.  It's fun to be in better shape now than I was 8 weeks ago.  It's fun to be 6 pounds lighter (24 pounds less stress on the knees with each step) and it's fun to know that the best is yet to come.

It's not the heat, it's the humidity

I got a decently early start for this morning's 12 miler. We had some rain last night so the temperature was down a bit from this last couple of weeks (64 degrees vs. 70+ the last two weeks). However, when I stepped out of the car I started sweating immediately. According to Longmont's Weather Underground the humidity stood at about 90%. I started out and the humidity was immediately oppressive.

 I was trying a new app today, called "Zombies! Run!" which mixes dialog in with your music. The intro is that your helicopter has crashed on it's way to a safe zone after the zombie apocalypse has happened. The people in the safe zone talk to you, and you pick up materials and supplies along your run to the base, and there are a multitude of missions to go through. Sample:

 "Hello...running person. I don't know you but I have you on camera. There's a small army of zombies to your left...you need to get to move faster." At one point there was a zombie moaning in my left ear. It was creepy! That was also my fastest split of the day.

 Since this was my long run I was keeping my pace between 10:40 and 11:40. They went like this:

1. 10:40 
2. 10:30 
3. 10:27 
4. 10:14 - Zombie! Run! 
5. 11:30 Mile 5 is where I felt the humidity get to me. Ate a fuel gel. 
6. 10:55 At this point I was doing the math in my head as to whether I was going to make it back, or have to walk it in. 
7. 10:52 Surely I was going to run out of energy at this point...but the gel kicked in and I got a second wind. 
8. 10:52 Ok, staying consistent. 2/3 of the way there. 
9. 10:55 Around this time the sun came out so now it was hot AND humid. I knew at any time I was going to run out of gas. 
10. 11:04 Starting to feel the heat.  I made a bargain with myself. If I could run 5 minutes I would walk 30 seconds. This is also the point at which I had run the farthest since the marathon last May. 
11. 10:35 Run 5/walk 30 seemed to work really well! I still had enough juice to close this thing out. 
12. 10:56 It was hot, humid, and it was over!

A couple of other things I did differently today was, firstly, I wore my hydration backpack so I had PLENTY of water, and on a day like this that had to make a difference. Secondly, I put Nipguards on, and that made such a big difference compared to the last couple of weeks.  Once I get sweating, I don't stop and on my longer runs I started getting some chafing issues. All of this is why I much prefer run in 40 degree weather rather than the summer heat. So...hydration pack, Nipguards, gel packs and zombies. 12 miles, done!