Long Day

Jake and I met over at the Old Forbes Mill in Los Gatos. This is what it used to look like. Now only the lower building in front is still standing.

We then ran an easy out and back for a warm up. Then we went up again at a what was tempo for Jake and about 70% for me. The time was 22:07. On the last up and back Jake went out hard and I just followed. My HR quickly went up to 75% of max and stayed there for most of the run except for a weird bad patch of about 2 minutes where it dropped down into the 130's and 140's. I couldn't figure out whether the HRM was acting up or whether there was some sort of interference that caused a poor signal. One thing was for sure. During that 2 minutes I did not feel very good and thought about dropping out so maybe my body was sending "The Big Message". I actually dropped back about 10 yards behind Jake. After that everything equalized and I began to quickly feel much better. I pulled right up alongside of him and began to flow along. On the way back I kept the HRM at 75% of max plus or minus and ran the loop in 21:07. Jake was struggling and had dropped back about 10 seconds.

The highlight of the run back was passing the Los Gatos Girls Field Hockey team running up the trail and carrying their sticks. There must have been 50 or more of them. We passed one girl limping back to the school. I asked her if she was OK and she smiled saying that the bottom of her foot hurt. Sounded like plantar fascia. I told her that she needed to work on having a more pronounced limp to convince her coach that she was really injured.

I am now on a three day training program. The main elements are the following:

1. Long run at long tempo pace. So this is not easy.

2. Short tempo run of 2-3 miles.

3. Mid tempo run of 3-4 miles.

4. Intervals at roughly 5K pace.

My plan is to do 2-3 of these runs every week and not run easy, jog-type recovery days but just walk or take the day off. So every run has a purpose. It is the Run Less, Run Faster in approach but with some modifications. Perhaps more effort based than exact time based. I just don't trust all of their recommended paces.

My primary motivation was around the fact that I was simply not enjoying my running. As slow as I can run was beginning to get to me. So I will become a workout whore.