June 9, 2014

Spring Training #5 - An attempt to regroup - then the turtle icon appears!

Three straight turtle icons is bad news. Unless they are Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Below are my key runs/workouts for the block of time between the Indy 500 half-marathon and the (early) termination of the Spring racing season. As I said here, it became obvious that the best-case scenario for Duluth was probably ~1:07 again, and I just didn't want to race there when I know I'm not anywhere near my best.

Week of May 5: 8K AT Tempo; 20 mile long run at Jeremy Ranch.

Week of May 12: AM 6 mile AT Tempo + PM 8 x 300m (1500); 10 x 600m (5K); 20 mile long run at Jeremy Ranch.

Week of May 19: LT Reps: 2 x 2.5 miles + 2 x 1 mile; 6 x 1000m + 6 mile AT Tempo.

Week of May 26: 20 mile LR at Jeremy Ranch; 12 x 400m; Bombed 3 x 2 mile (3 x 1); 20 mile LR at Jeremy Ranch.

Week of June 2: Bombed 15 x 1 minute fartlek; The End.

After running 1:07:00 at Indianapolis, I panicked - jacked up my mileage for no reason, lost confidence in myself, and generally fell apart. What started off as a mental hiccup turned into a physical one - my workouts got progressively slower throughout the month of May (hence the appearance of the turtle icon!). The fartlek on June 2nd was the (poison) icing on the cake - I jogged home from that one finally realizing I need to shut down my training for the spring. Compared to the rest of the training I did during the first four months of the year (post: #1 - #2 - #3 - #4) this was a very poor block of training, both in planning (ie. stupidly deviating from the plan) and execution. I got bloodwork done the day after my last bombed workout, and my Hematocrit and Ferritin were at all-time low levels.

So, a disappointing end to the spring... but I'll get back up from this. I'm going to take some downtime to re-charge mentally, then keep things very light/easy throughout June. When I feel ready to get back after it, I'll start building in July towards a fall marathon... hopefully Chicago if I can get my act back together... and run some of the local races in Utah during the summer.

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