Stadium

5/18/10

The last few days have been great. I seem to always have energy when i'm turning up to training because my mileage is lower than normal. I still have another couple of lower mileage weeks (until Bolder Boulder - My next race) and then I think we will ramp it up a bit.

Saturday's long run was good. AC, Jordan and I met all the girls and Greg at Greg's house and then ran up Rd222. Its uphill for the first 4 miles and then it flattens out. It climbs again as you go by 7.5 miles and you can continue for as long as you want on this road but we were just running 16 miles this morning so turned around at 8 miles. Jordan had already turned around so AC and I gradually picked up the pace as the miles went along at it felt great. We ran the first 8 miles in 52 mins and then the last 8 miles in 45.30. After some drills and stretching, I headed back to the house where Julie and I made a great pancake breakfast and then headed out to the east side of town to feed the ducks out there. Unfortunately I had to go to work at night so I got a quick nap in before heading to Karma.

We were planning on going down to Sedona and the creek on sunday but we ended up getting up late and then other things were getting in the way so we decided to stay in town. We tried to head to one of the hotel pool's but then found it was under construction. This somehow led us to looking for furniture at a new store that has just opened up and there were some great prices so we decided on a really comfortable sofa for our space in the living room. We actually spent a long time in the house marking out all the possibilities for where to put sofa's, love seat's and recliner's. We originally wanted to get a sofa and love seat but we think it will just be a sofa now.

I drove down to Sedona at 7am on Monday so I could get back to Flagstaff early (the rest of the group were leaving 30 mins later). I did a session of 12*200m with 200m recovery and it went really well. I was surprised with how easy I felt (probably because I was only doing 12) and gradually got quicker as the session went on. I started at 30.5 and finished in 27.0. My Mizuno Flagship shoes felt really great on the track and super light. You would think that with how light the shoes are there would be a sacrifice in cushioning or support but there isn't at all. It looks like these will be my perfect road racing shoes (half marathon and below). After doing a bunch of stretching, I headed up the road and stopped by the creek to soak my legs in the cold water before heading back to town. I had a great nap and then felt really good on my second run so that was good. There was no tightness or soreness in my legs so I am looking forward to tackling some good track session soon.

Tomorrow I have a 6 mile steady state run at Buffalo Park so it will be a good test to see how I feel running steady to fast.

The house is really coming along. It has all the dry wall in place so we can really get a feel for the size of the house now. We are about 30 days out from the house being completed so its getting exciting.

5/14/10

Boy does it feel good to run hard again! Yesterday I did a fartlek and it felt like I was flying. I was up at Buffalo Park with Nick and Andrew (fresh off of their 3rd and 1st places at the USA 25km champs) and it wasn't really windy so it was a good day for the workout. My legs were moving quicker than I thought they could right now so that will hopefully set me up for some more good workouts. The only time it started to feel hard was when I had to run the hill at the end of the loop. This always kills no matter what speed you run and it continued to hurt for the remaining hard efforts. I was going to go by the gym and do a circuit session but decided to go home and nap as I was pretty tired.

The evening run was pretty hard to do as I was feeling sluggish and very unmotivated. I drove to the gym so that I would have to get on with some sort of exercise. I ended up running on the treadmill as it had just started to rain when I got there. A brisk 5 miles later, I decided to jump into the Ultimate Conditioning class that was about to start and this was a pretty good idea. It was tough but not so tough that I was going to be too sore the next day. I think this was wise as it was my first circuit back.

When I woke up this morning I took some tests from one of the teams new sponsor's, Bioletics, that will tell me all about my Vitamin D, Mineral Balance, Strength and Hormone recovery, Iron/Ferritin, Essential Amino Acid and Essential Fatty Acid levels. Once we find out the results of the tests, we can work with the company to see what dietary and supplement changes need to be made so that we can perform optimally.

This mornings run was amusing as Andrew and I decided to take a new route back from the trails and got completely disorientated. We finally came to a stretch of road and Andrew made a joke about it being Lake Mary Rd. Not much of a joke as it was Lake Mary Rd which meant another 2 miles back to the car. At least we now know which trail not to take anymore. It was good to see some new areas though.

Most of the daytime was spent trying to organize our mortgage details. There was so much back and forth involved and we decided to wait until after the weekend to lock in a rate. I went by the house and the dry wall was being put up so we can get a real sense of the space now.

I took the evening run off as I will easily 100 miles this week without it and thought it would be wiser to be more precautious at this point in my training.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow's long run. We're heading up 222 which means there will be a lot of uphill for the first half followed by a lot of downhill so hopefully I can get my legs rolling a bit.

Questions

John F - I'm currently training once a day and am looking to step up my training but want to avoid any injuries so was thinking of ways of cross training.

Cross training is a great way of increasing your training if you are worried about getting injured. Personally I would take it very slowly and try and add in an extra run a week and do that for maybe 3 weeks and then add another run another few weeks and keep this type of pattern going until you get to a point where your body is handling the running without breaking down. If you do need to add cross training instead there are a few options you can add. The 3 mains types (that are most closely related to running) are the eliptical machine, aqua jogging and cycling. Out of these 3 I would recommend cycling the most as you can really build your strength up and get some hard workouts in also. If I am injured I usually do a few spinning classes as that helps me to really push myself. I actually talked to Jos Hermans (Haile Gebrselassie's agent) about cross training and he was telling me how Haile has incorporated a lot of cycling into his training so that he can get the strength that he needs. The thing with cycling though is that you want to either put the seat as high as possible (so that you are replicating a running position - you don't have to but I would recommend it) or stay standing for most of the cycle. This can become very hard but if you can do it, the strength increases are great. I don't really like the eliptical very much because I can never get my heart rate up very hard, no matter how hard I am working. I tend to use this as a recovery tool when I am injured rather than one for hard workouts. Aqua jogging is great but be prepared for the boredom aspect of it. I have done quite a bit of aqua jogging so I don't use a belt and from the studies I have read, you also get the most out of the workout without a belt as you have to work hard the whole time.

Henry G - I have been having some hamstring tightness for the past several days. It doesn't alter my stride but it just achs and feels tight. I have been stretching and doing the roller but it doesn't seem to make a difference. Do you have any experience with this? What would you do?

I will have this sometimes if I have done something different that my muscles aren't used to like a long hill run or sprinting. Hamstrings usually take a little while to recover so I would give it a few more day and if you are still tight either go see a massage therapist or a physiotherapist as the tightness may be coming from somewhere else on your body. My hamstrings are always pretty tight no matter how much stretching I do because my back is quite weak. If I get my back worked on and there is no spasm, I can suddenly stretch my hamstrings further than I ever have. I use the Wharton stretching routine a lot to help with tightness.

The day before my Olympic race

This was the day before my Olympic 3000m steeplechase. I felt great this day but had no idea that I would feel terrible the next day. I just rediscovered these videos so I will continue to post some more as the days go by.

Training again

The days have been passing by slowly but it has become easier now that I am back training twice a day. I've only been getting 2 to 3 shifts a week at work so that has left me to entertain myself during the days and get things done that i had been putting off for a while. The one thing I am finding that I am able to do is sleep a lot more. I've never been a great sleeper even when I was running 150 miles during the week but since starting back running, I am finding that I can sleep 9 hours at night with a 1-2 hour nap in the afternoon. This is great as I always struggle to stay asleep when the sun comes up and the light starts poking through the blinds.

Last weeks training consisted of running 69 miles with 2 days running twice. I ran very easy all week and am ready to start hitting some good sessions again. On Monday I did a light workout of 10 laps of the track alternating between 100m hard and 100m easy. Yesterday I met the guys and we went for a run up Shultz Pass. I hadn't run these trails for a long time as they had been covered in snow and I have moved to the other side of town. It was nice to get back on these trails as I used to run them almost everyday. I almost didn't get out for my second run as I had been sitting around for a while and really didn't feel like getting out into strong winds. Luckily, Julie's workmate, Cariee, came round to run with Julie so I made myself put my shoes on and get out onto the trails. I actually felt fine as soon as I started running so the run went by pretty quickly. We all got back to the apartment around the same time and were greeted with the fantastic smell of the crock pot dinner that I had put on to cook at 8am. I had basically just thrown everything I could find in the kitchen in the pot and let it cook all day. A big hung of steak, navy beans, carrots, potatoes, loads of spices and some chilies rounded out the ingredients and luckily it turned out well. We ate this stew with a massive loaf of freshly baked bread and then relaxed in front of the TV and continued to get through season 4 of "It's always sunny in Philidelphia".

I was supposed to do a fartlek this morning but I wasn't feeling great for some reason so I just jogged for 30 mins and talked to Greg about what I should do. We decided upon doing it tomorrow up at Buffalo Park so I would just take the rest of the day easy. I am just going to run an easy 10 miles this evening through the trails. I have recently been running in full tracksuit as I was just reading about why the Kenyans do that so often. I could never understand why the Kenyans would do this but I have been reading "More Fire" by Toby Tanser (a follow up to the famous "Train Hard, Win Easy - The Kenyan Way") and the runners explain that if they are running in lots of clothes and being uncomfortable during the run, they will feel so much faster when they get to the start line of their race and they are wearing next to nothing. Doing this right now is ok as it is a bit chilly with the high winds so i'll see how I feel doing this during the summer when there is no wind and its nice and hot.

Our house is really coming along with the shingles being finished and the electrics all being wired throughout the house. They are about to put the dry wall in so Julie and I are going to wire the house for Surround sound as its fairly easy to do now that there are no wall in place. This will save a lot of time and money over doing it later down the line so we will be doing that tonight. They are anticipating that the house will be finished in a month or so and we are getting excited about moving in.

I'm hopefully going to get some video up on here soon. I was given a video camera when I made the Olympic team so I will hopefully get some nice footage of training and anything else that I find interesting. I will try and post some of the olympic videos that I just rediscovered also.

Back to blogging

I just wanted to let everyone know that I will be getting back to regular blogging in the next few days. I have had a nice relaxing time during the post marathon recovery time so will be starting back up with some light sessions next week. I had a nice run on the trails with Greg and Ian this morning and now the busy weekend starts. I'm helping out at the regional high school track meet today and then heading into a big night at work tonight. I'll be quite busy for the rest of the weekend so i'll fill everyone in on Monday with how things have been going and what my future plans are.

I hope everyone is having a great time training as the weather starts to pick up. Again, feel free to contact me with any questions you may have (adlemoncello@hotmail.com).

Cheers

Andrew