Monday, July 30, 2007

93 km for the week

With work and life crowding in, I seem to be reduced to weekly updates. Probably not such a bad thing.

Started last week feeling tired and lacking in energy, empty legs, and sore back. Slight tummy discomfort. High temperatures and humidity added to the challenge. I scaled back distances and intensity on Monday (easy 8.4k) and Tuesday (12k). Still not feeling great on Wednesday evening, but jumped into the monthly 5k time trial with a view to run it at HR no higher than 165, which is the same thing I did last month. The 20:06 turned out was somewhat slower than the previous month, but the heat and feeling poorly surely contributed. Ran home from work on Thursday night (12.7k) and found energy levels slightly better. Friday (12.6k) I ran back from home to work and finally starting to move more freely. Saturday morning I was up and out the door reasonably early to try and beat the heat (ha!) and actually had a decent 12 k, fastest of the week, not counting the 5k of the time trial. In the shower later I noticed that I am tender in my right nether region, so might have an infection down there, which would go some way to explain my doldrums. Might have to get it checked out. Sunday (yesterday) morning I got going quite early and headed out to try and run 2 hours, I didn't mind how slowly. Ended up making it to 22 km on the nose in 2 hours and 5 minutes.

I recovered pretty quickly from yesterday's slow run, but with the stomach and abdomen discomfort this morning I have decided to take a day off. There was a cool change overnight and it would have been lovely running weather this morning. Plus yesterday was my 20th day straight. That was something I really would have liked to have continued and it took quite a bit of will-power and mental struggle to resist the urge this morning from about 5:00 as I woke and dozed fitfully, got up, went back to bed, changed my mind about four times ... finally accepted I had to try and do what is best for my body... damn, it will be a low mileage week now ;-)

6 comments:

Ewen said...

Lucky you're not a horse Steve, or they'd have you off to the glue factory. Thanks for sparing us the nether region details ;)

Now that I'm trying to run 'high' mileage I know how you feel about the missed day. At least you didn't jog down the hospital corridor, Ron Hill style, to keep your streak intact.

I noticed in the diary the 'lower' and 'upper' aerobic runs had very similar average HRs (141 and 143) - what's going on there?

I think I remember your HR max as 186? The 5k tempo run therefore was at 86%? I've done a few 5ks on the grass track at 89% which gives me 4:49/km. Maybe I should slow these down a bit.

Stephen Lacey said...

The 141 vs 143 ...well picked up Ewen. I guess the best way to put it is that the lower aerobic was towards the upper end of lower and the upper was towards the lower end of upper. I think I was running more efficiently on the upper aerobic run as well. Felt more comfortable, was pushing off better. The warm up portion always throws off the overall average HR too, and I tend to name the whole run based on where I think a decent portion of the time was spent. The run I called lower aerobic had a portion of upper aerobic running in it, but not enough to classify the run as upper aerobic. And Saturday's upper aerobic probably only just had enough time spent in that time to qualify. Maybe I should split out the work portion from the warmup/cool down portions.

Samurai Running said...

running 20 days straight is pretty good but if you want to set yourself a real challenge try going more than two days without scratching your nuts!!

Now that's hard. So to speak.

TD said...

Agree with Scott...about the 20 days running that is!. Tremendous work there Stephen with good consistent training.

And 'My Moty' is friends with 'your Moty' and I hear that your Moty is thanking you for that day off. Best to keep those Moties pleased to avoid discussions with the fairies and their ilk! (For visitors to Stephen's blog who think I am nuts, my recent blog posts provided background on this discussion.)

Tesso said...

I think all you need for that stomach discomfort is a good old fashioned blogger punch in the belly. We are all too far away, you may have to administer it yourself.

Ewen said...

That makes sense Steve. I thought you may have been going nuts.