For the past month I have adopted a new training strategy. All of my running this year has been geared towards one thing – going the distance. Now that I have a really good base built up, I thought it would be a good time to start adding some speed. I also wanted to toughen up my legs some more and just get them used to running a lot more frequently. Even though I have put in some big miles, my typical week only consists of 3-5 runs. I wanted to up that total to 6/week, and shoot for having one hard speedwork session, one tempo run, and one long run. The rest would be slower 5-8 mile recovery runs.

I picked out a half marathon coming up in December to give me something to focus on and got to work. After quite a bit of searching, I found a training plan that fit my ideas and plugged the workouts into my training calendar. Some of them were a little complicated and tough to do:

Standard warm up. Run 2 x .5/.75/2 mi supersets. Run .5 @ 7:15, .75 @ 7:30, and 2 mi @ 7:45. Do not rest between the distances. Recover between the sets with .5 mi at an easy pace. Cool down with .5 mi at an easy pace.

Standard warm up. Run 30 minutes alternating between 30 seconds at 20 seconds per mile faster than 5K pace and 30 seconds at an easy pace. Cool down with 5 minutes at an easy pace. 6:50/easy

I started out well and nailed the workouts as planned. I struggled through some bad shin pain for a couple of weeks, and still got it done. Then the wheels started coming off. I started bailing out on some of the workouts, which is something I hadn’t done before. I would have to cut them short because I just couldn’t do all of the specified repeats or mileage at the prescribed pace. At first it was just once in a while, and I chalked it up to being fatigued, but then it started happening on every key workout. The training plan cracked me physically and mentally. I was beat down with failure, my legs were shot, and my attitude in general had taken a turn for the worse.

I hopped on the treadmill Monday to do a challenging workout (considering my condition) with 3 miles easy followed by 7 miles at my planned half-marathon pace. I did the first 3, then ramped it up and started going faster. At 3.91 miles I pulled the plug and got off the treadmill. It just wasn’t happening. I hardly ever quit anything, but I was in a real rut here and started to question my running in general. With that, I made a decision to take some time off and wait until I actually wanted to run again.

That only lasted 4 days. It was a much needed break, though.

Today I laced up my trusty trail shoes (which was nice because I’d been running roads all this time) and got back to my roots – or rocks as the case may be… I’ve had my eye on Carpenter Peak for a while and have wanted to run to the top and back from my house. It’s one of the dominant features above our subdivision, and I hadn’t ever been up to the top despite living here for almost ten years.

I took off under an overcast sky, 49 degrees, in shorts, t-shirt, and gloves. Perfect. I had no idea how many miles it would be, but kind of had 2 hours as a time goal to get to the top.

My calves complained mightily under the strain of the first climbs. My right one burned with a steady fire for a couple of miles, and my left caused my foot to go numb for a while. Need to get those puppies loosened up! Once I hit some rolling terrain I was feeling much better. Even though I was working, I could tell that I felt pretty good in general and would be able to hold my pace for a long time. I also didn’t want to stop or take any walk breaks (which is pretty standard practice on a mountainous trail run).

I got to the base of the mountain proper in about an hour and started up the singletrack trail that switchbacked its way up the slope. Man, I was really feeling good here! I ran the whole thing without ever going over my anaerobic threshold. When my heart rate hits 172, that is the point where I start producing lactic acid faster than my muscles can clear it. After that, it’s only a matter of time before performance really declines. I was able to keep a steady effort with my heart rate at 165 and the legs felt great. Hmmm, this is new. Even with all of the miles I’ve done, a climb like this would normally have me crossing the line into the red zone if I tried to run it.

I think all of the training I had been doing (even though it wiped me out) really boosted my ability to work more efficiently below my threshold, and also to continue working well when I was near my threshold. I guess that’s what spending all of that time running at that point will do for you. Anyway, it was great to be able to run that mountain strongly. I think I will definitely stick with this type of training, but I need to make sure I’m recovered from one hard run before doing another. Can’t just blindly follow a plan anymore.

It was 9 miles and 2,000 feet of climbing to the top and I made it there very comfortably in 1:52. Nice.

Great view all the way to downtown Denver

With the forecast for a beautiful fall day in the 70’s on Saturday, followed by a big snowstorm on Sunday, the time was right to get out and go for a long run. I had ideas to follow the tradition of running the number of miles to match my age (38), but bagged that after spending about an hour trying to map out a route that would work. What I really wanted to do was a destination run. Start from home, end up somewhere interesting. I’ve always done my long runs as loops or out-and-backs, and wanted to make this one a point-to-point adventure.

The route I chose would loosely follow one of my old stand-by training routes on the bike, ending up at the top of Lookout Mountain above the city of Golden (CO). I was a little nervous about this one. I knew the distance would be between 30-35 miles, which I felt I could handle. The part that had me worried is that I would be finishing with a 5 mile climb at an average grade of over 5%. Would it break me? I really didn’t want to end up walking that thing, but wasn’t sure if I’d be able to keep a run going or not with so many miles to get there.

Google Earth view of Lookout Mountain

My goals were pretty simple. Finish. Run without taking any extended walk breaks. Make the climb in under an hour. My best time on the bike was 23 minutes, so it would be interesting to see how I would compare on foot.

I started running at 8:00am under a dusty blue sky with a gentle tailwind. This was nice! The miles passed steadily and I was feeling good. I ran all the hills I normally would walk on a long run and just kept a good pace going. I started to drag a bit after 15 miles and was startled by some cyclists that came up close behind me and started shouting at me to get out of the way. It was my buddies from my old cycling team – Tim, Rich, and Marty out for a ride. We had some good laughs and they rode along with me for about a half mile so we could shoot the bull for a bit before they took off. That really gave me a lift and I felt much better after that point. Interesting how a mental boost can have such a physical impact.

I stopped at a gas station in the town of Morrison (mile 18) to refill my pack with water. I also made short work of a king size package of peanut butter cups. That got me ready for the hard climb up through Red Rocks park. I left the road in favor of the rugged single track and was pleased at how well I climbed the steep parts. No stopping, no walking, just steady running.

After topping out, I crossed under I-70 and had a long descent to recover on. Things took a turn for the worse when my planned water stop at a park ended up with a dry fountain. I guess they’re already turned off for the winter. I didn’t like the idea of diverting from my route in search of water, and would just have to make do with what little I had left.

Shortly after that I came across a bull elk on the side of the path. He was munching some leaves on a fallen branch and wasn’t about to move for me. I got close and tried to shoo him away a bit for a lady waiting behind me with her dogs. When it stopped chewing, stared at me, and flared its nostrils – I took that as a sign to back up nice and slow… I finally just had to ease past it, coming within 15 feet, and go on my way.

I took one walk break at the base of the climb to ready myself for the final push. While I was walking, I saw another friend ride by. Dennis was out on his bike enjoying the day and we had a good chat. We would end up seeing each other a couple of times on the climb and finishing not too far apart.

I made a call to my wife to let her know I was about an hour from finishing, and hit the lap timer on my watch as I started the climb. It was hard, but thankfully I was feeling ok and knew I was going to make it alright. I watched my heart rate climb and tried to keep it under 170. The wind was pretty brutal in a few spots, slowing me down to a 14 minute pace. I knew I had to keep it under 13.5 to break an hour, so tried to make up time wherever I could. I started feeling better and better as I got closer to the top, and really sped up for the last mile with some Def Leppard blasting in my ears. It was a great way to finish!

I hit the top in 55 minutes for a 12:10 average. I’ll take it. Just a few minutes later my wife and girls showed up and it was so great to see them. I got cleaned up and we went out for a nice birthday dinner. Doesn’t get any better than that!

I took a picture every mile of the run and then put it together in a 30 second slide show.

It’s been an interesting week running-wise. I was talking to a co-worker on Monday about his run in the Denver Marathon the previous day. He made it and was able to get around pretty good, not too sore. We were talking about our training, and how runs that used to seem pretty big now seem routine. We both made comments about how we thought we could go out and run a half marathon on any given day.

I was planning on running at lunch, and decided to do a half marathon as a spur of the moment test. I haven’t raced any of the traditional distances (5k, 10k, half, marathon) so I really didn’t know what to expect. Most of my runs are slow and steady, putting in big miles to get ready for an ultra distance race. I ran my training half marathon in 1:43, averaging a 7:51 pace. I was quite surprised that I could pull that off only 2 weeks after my hundred miler and without any specific training. I felt like I could dip down into the high 1:30’s with slightly fresher legs, and maybe drop even more with some faster paced runs.

On Wednesday, I took the opposite approach. I worked on holding my heart rate at, or under 140bpm. I wanted to average less than 140 and still be able to hold a pace less than 10 min/mile for 5 miles. I didn’t quite make it (averaged 10:15), but want to keep working on those types of runs. I feel like I have a lot of gains to be made by improving my running efficiency and economy, and think that being able to hold faster paces at a lower heart rate will be the key.

In order to start working on my efficiency, I decided to run every day this week. And just do a lot more running in general. Up to this point, I’ve been taking a couple of days off each week and mixing in cross-training in the form of cycling as well. Those are good things to do, but I’m feeling that for me to improve beyond where I’m at now, I need to run a lot more consistently. This will condition my body to running at all different distances, levels of recovery, and hopefully trigger some more adaptation. I know from my cycling background, the key to a smooth and efficient pedal stroke is to do a lot of miles with that in mind. I’m hoping to replicate that effect while running.