Difference between revisions of "Training Macrolog"

Revision as of 13:28, 2 January 2012

This is not the log of each workout I do, but rather a higher level summary of what's happening with my training overall. For a detailed log, I use SportTracks and publish to Dailymile at http://www.dailymile.com/people/JonathanS. Below is a screenshot of my mileage from Dailymile.com that I will update each month. The high of 188 is the week of the North Coast 24 hour race and 186 was peak training week for that race.

Dailymile.com mileage chart.

1 December 2011

December was a quiet month, with some steady training and a slight taper in the last week of the year for Freedom Park 24 Hour race. My body weight has risen over the holidays and that is impacting my running significantly, so I need to shed some body fat.

2 November 2011

November was a pleasantly uneventful month other than a practice Three Phase Taper for pacing the 3 hour group at Thunder Road Marathon. My training is going well, and I'm enjoying the cooler weather. I may experiment with a return to four days/week again as part of my evaluation of different training patterns.

3 October 2011

At the beginning of the month I was still recovering from the North Coast 24 hour race, and it was not until the middle of November that I felt like I was back in the rhythm. I'm continuing my experiment of running most days and I feel like I'm getting a sense of the relative strengths and weaknesses of this approach when compared with running 4 days/week. I plan on writing this up in the near future, but I'd like to do some reading around any research that supports or disproves my embryonic ideas.

4 September 2011

September included a successful taper, 2nd place at the 2011 North Coast 24 Hour National Championships, and a speedy recovery, so I'd consider it one of my finer months.

5 August 2011

August continued my experiment with running every day rather than four days per week, which pushed my mileage to a new high. My peak week was 186 miles, running 27 miles for 6 consecutive days. I found that nutrition and recovery becomes critical with this amount of exercise. I'm in the process of writing a page for 'GOMAD grazing', the technique I've found helped me with the higher mileage and I believe would be effective for other runners. I'm not sure if this high mileage approach to training is more effective than training four days per week or not. I'm a lot fitter and faster now than I was when I started, but I've also lost 13 pounds and been doing quite a bit of altitude training with the AltoLab. I'd like to think that this type of high mileage would change fast twitch muscle fibers into slow twitch, but there seems to be little evidence for that. Running 180+ miles per week and holding down a full time job puts huge logistical and psychological pressures in addition to the obvious physical strain. In many ways, my body handled the high mileage far better than my mind did.

6 July 2011

July was an interesting month for me.

• After my return from England I decided I needed to lose some weight, though when I started, I had no idea how much I had to lose. By the end of July I was down 10 pounds and feeling much better.
• I restarted my altitude training, which has gone far better this time. It may be because the heat has slowed down my training anyway, maybe because I'm eating more beetroot (vasodialator) or that I'm being more careful to avoid the lower O2 saturations.
• The heat in Charlotte has been the worst I've known, and it's really slowed me down.
• Without intending to, I found myself in the middle of the month starting to run every day. This was triggered by being unable to run on my usual days, so I started off with some extra 'back to back days'. I found that running every day helped keep my appetite more stable, and thus my weight loss was easier. This has contributed to the higher than normal mileage this month.

7 June 2011

I spent the first three weeks of June in the UK on the lead up to the West Highland Way Race. Being on vacation, and leading up to a race, I did little running, so my June numbers are quite low.

8 May 2011

Towards the end of the month I felt like I was getting back to training right. For the last two weeks I reverted to running four days per week rather than three, which seems to suit me better. I've added more hills towards the end of the month, and this has been tough but effective. The weather in Charlotte has also warmed up in the last week or so, and this has started to limit my pace.

9 April 2011

I feel like I'm beginning to get back on track with my training, but it's not there yet. The blister on my heel has continued to be an issue, and I've had some nagging problems with my left hip, but hopefully May will be a better month. I'm focusing again on moving to running three days per week rather than four, with two of the runs being generally shorter, higher quality. Doing a single longer run rather than two back to back long runs may be easier than I first envisioned. I'm finding that a small amount of speedwork in the middle or at the end of a long run seems to dramatically increase the effective distance.

10 March 2011

March was another poor month for my running, rounding out a rather sad first quarter. At the end of February I blistered my heel badly at the Mount Mitchell Challenge, and this restricted my running throughout the month. At the end of March, I've started to try running three times a week again rather than four. This is a significant challenge, as doing one long run rather than two back to back long runs requires a lot more time and effort in the single run.

11 February 2011

February has been a gradual return to fitness after my downtime in January from my Mortons Neuroma. After I accepted that I'd lost more fitness than I expected, and backed off a little, things returned reasonably quickly. The Mortons Neuroma has not been much of an issue, though it is still there and is improving slowly. I have not done as much downhill training as I need to, which will be a focus for March as I prepare for the Umstead 100 at the beginning of April. My body weight is up to around 140, and my fat levels are a little higher than I'd like, so I'll need to keep on top of that in the coming weeks. My weekly mileage is a around 80, which is working well for me as I am able to run at a higher intensity.

12 January 2011

The statistics for January 2010 are rather sad, with only 189 miles covered, compared with 470 for January of last year. This is primarily due to the time off for my Mortons Neuroma. With hindsight, the time off did not help the healing process at all, but hindsight is always 20:20. At the new year I’d also decided to experiment with running 3 days per week and some dietary changes. It’s hard to know if these have hindered my recovery, but I’ve not bounced back as quickly as I would have expected. Therefore I’m “reverting to last known good configuration” until I’ve regained my previous fitness level and then restart some of the experimentation.

13 December 2010

My training is going well and my performance seems to be improving. I lost muscle mass and gained body fat after Hinson Lake in September, a change I've finally reversed. I've noticed a strong correlation between my running and my body composition. I'm now at about the best muscle to non-muscle ratios I've had since I've been a runner, with low body fat (guessing around 5-7%). Here are some things that I believe are working well for me.

• I've added biking as cross training 2-3 days per week. I think this has helped to control my body fat, as my calorie expenditure is a little more even. Without the biking, I was burning 2,000+ calories on non-running days and ~5,000+ on running days, which is a huge difference. I'm generally biking for about an hour.
• My protein intake is now much higher than it has been. After my long runs I'm typically taking 50-100 grams of Protein within the first hour, and probably 200-300 grams protein daily. While this is high by normal standards, to get 25% of calories from protein on a 5,000 Calorie day would require 300+grams! Since I raised my protein intake, I'm recovering better, have lower body fat and more muscle mass. I'm also less hungry than I have been, as the protein is remarkably satisfying. I'm following Nutrient Timing as a key part of my diet.
• Doing a Tabata workout on the Bike may help with my aerobic capacity.
• I've started to do some of my runs without any fuel to help train my body to burn more fat.
• My mileage has dropped from a high of 100-110+ miles/week over the summer to around 90 this fall. This is partly because I've stopped doing any heat adaptation runs in the afternoon, and partly because I'm trying to focus more on quality, even at the expense of distance.
• After MMTR trashed my legs so badly, I've been focusing more on doing hard downhill running. This often results in a much shorter workout, as Downhill Intervals take a lot out of the quads.
• I still have no idea how to taper for a race. Balancing the need for rest and recover with the need to keep fitness up and control my body fat is tough. I'm experimenting with less time off before races, down to just a couple of days. I may experiment with doing the bike up until the race itself.