worst week ever / best week ever .. training update

The last two weeks have been a tale of two training extremes where I had one of my worst training weeks that I can remember followed by one of my best.

February 1-7
After a good start to the week (which followed a very good previous week)it soon all came to a crashing end. On Sunday night I awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of my spouse pouring glasses of water into the toilet. Half asleep I thought how strange until I realized that wasn't glasses of water.. oh ooh.

Monday
10km recovery run. All is well. Kim home with the flu.

Tuesday
13.5km easy run on hills. Kim feeling better. I began to think I might escape the flu

Wednesday
No run as I was way to busy puking. Kim is feeling much better. Miss my club run as my running "friends" use this private time to plot an elaborate prank against me after all what are friends for (I will cover the prank in my next blog). On a more upbeat note Kim feeling much better.

Thursday
Able to move from the bathroom floor to the couch. Hurray? No run

Friday
Think I am feeling a bit better. Go into work. Bad decision. No run.

Saturday
Feel almost normal. Run 13km easy.

Sunday
Feel okay so head out on my long run. First 10km go fine. At 11km my heart rate begins to climb. I am running easy pace but my heart rate is at threshold. Tough it out until 22km then decide to be smart and cut my long run short. This is only the 3rd time in 2 years where I have cut a run short. The other 2 involved heatwave conditions. I am so not impressed but know its the best call.

Week total
36.4 miles (58.5 km) total for the week which is pretty much a write off at this point in my training. You might say it was in the toliet. Oh well better luck next week.

I officially designate the first week of February "The Week of Barf"

Feb 8 to 14th
Monday
10km recovery run. I feel normal. HR is fine.

Tuesday
14.5km easy run on hills. Feel good. Hulk smash kind of good.

Wednesday
19km partial tempo run with the club. 6km easy, 6km tempo, 7km easy. Its freaking cold and windy. I run the tempo portion maybe a bit too hard but its hard to tell with the wind. The puking feeling I have at the tempo part of the run has nothing to do with the flu.

Thursday
12.6km easy run. Feel really good. No lingering effects from Wednesday but I still run slow per coach Rogers orders.

Friday
14.3km Hill workout. 5km warm up, hill circuit, 5km cool down. Hill circuit consists of doing 200 - 300 meters of bounding up the steep portion of Central hill in high park then continue running to the top. Then a small recovery loop at the top of the hill and then back down the hill at top speed. This is followed at the bottom of the hill with a set of 5 strides at 5k pace. Then repeat. When Roger went over the workout I though it looks way too easy, maybe I should add in a third set. Man was I wrong. This work out was deceptively hard. My legs were jello during my cool down run home with my legs hurting in all new strange and wondrous places.

Saturday
12.6km easy run with hills. Legs were still toast from Fridays run so went slow.

Sunday
34km long run. Ran with other club members. It went very well. I was nervous because of my meltdown the week before. Maybe I forgot how to run long. No problems and my HR stayed where it should. Was planning on inserting some race pace miles in but instead did the entire run a little bit faster then normal. Thanks to Lynn, Kelly and Coby for pushing the pace.

Week total
117km or 72.8 miles
This is the most mileage I have ever put in for a training week. Legs tired but feel good and healthy. Next race is the Peterbrough HM in 2 weeks.