The February 2016 Running Challenge

@ereck44 - Congrats on the fitness gains! Love the running goals!

Looks like an unplanned rest day. My oblique muscle is a LOT better but I still feel it on certain movements. After doing a little bit of Dr. Google and coming to the clear concensus that I am going to die, I am also going to keep my planned rest day tomorrow to heal for 2 days before attempting a run on Saturday. Saturday is supposed to be a long run but I will cut that down and skip the long run this week. Hopefully I will be able to run each day as scheduled next week without it feeling any worse.

Damn oblique muscles...why you no work right?!?!

Oh crap, @Elise4270 you need to get that checked out so you can get a plan going. Hopefully it is not a fracture, but with swelling and discoloration like that I suspect you are going to need some downtime. We runners always need to think long term...like next season.

Where the f**k is March already?!?!? February is really pi$$ing me off with this injury crapola!!!

1-personal training episode. so sore
2-nothing, not feeling well
3-slept in. still not feeling great
4-see above, and then transmission cracked
5-car hunting
6-car hunting
7-4.75 miles. I added hills to my treadmill work out. oh the suck
8-nothing
9-i was on the way to the gym. because it was icy i didn't want to run outside. so icy, i hit a parked jeep with my 2 day all new to me car. no gym for me
10-yoga tonight. a little sore from the accident, but i'm really concerned about the race this weekend. I've not been able to train like I'd like to due to flares and accidents. I'm not sure how I'll do
11-no run. fell asleep by 7pm
12-slept like a rock thru my alarms
13-8k race day. freezing 1F. but i did get a PB and after not finding any particularly friendly people, i did find a few to chat and run with.
15-went to the gym and did a 10k virtual run. it was hard physically but I was proud I did it
16-rest
17-yoga tonight
18-wayward ice chunk took out rental's bumper, went back to insurance and got another car and filed a claim. sigh, no time for run today.
19-planned rest day.
20-7.04mi felt good. i missed the distance. the first few miles are always a struggle. it was my fastest 6-8 miles
21-video game day (borderlands pre-sequel)
22-nothing
23-lazy did not run. cannot get motivated
24-yoga tonight
25-overslept

totally not making my goal but I think i needed a rest. i was literally falling asleep at my desk this week





RACES:
Jan 16-Frosty 5k-33:43:123 (gun time-don't have chip time)
Feb 13-Steve Cullen Run 8k chip time: 53:37
Feb 15 Puppy Love Virtual Run 10k runkeeper time: 1:13:20
?Mar 14-Great Pi Run?
?Jun 11-Rock n Sole 5 or 8k? honeymoon might interfere
June 19th through Sunday, July 10th SHE Power Virtual Half

WhatMeRunning wrote: »

Oh crap,
Where the f**k is March already?!?!? February is really pi$$ing me off with this injury crapola!!!

Amen! I am beginning to think it's contagious. Maybe I'll get super lucky and get a few weeks off work. I can focus on cross training.

February goal—None first 1/2 on February 7…just going to try for as many miles as possible in February

2/2—5.2 ish km—the groundhog wouldn’t see his shadow if he existed here
2/4–3.2 km
2/7—21.09 km—Condura skyway marathon. Didn’t get the time I wanted as I had to walk a lot due to the heat and humidity and hills. Gee…I thought I was trained and ready.
2/17—4.78 km
2/18—4.87 km
2/21—14.12 km
2/23—5.02 km
2/25–6.4 km evening run

rohanivan wrote: »

Completed 5K in 00:31:51 my PR. Will definitely want to improve this...

But still an awesome time! I'd love to post a 31 on 5K! Enjoy it, but I understand about it spurring to better yourself.

@9voice9 -Glad the surgery went well. Here's to a speedy recovery!
@ceciliaslater -That stinks. I have been there too. But it will all be worth it when you are back to 100%. Hang in there!
@Elise4270 Tough to say without an x-ray, but there is definitely some bruising. I think you should rest and ice it and if it still bothers you get it checked out. When I had a stress fracture in my metatarsal, I could not comfortably walk on it and running was pretty much out of the question.

WhatMeRunning wrote: »

Where the f**k is March already?!?!?

Now you are talking like me. Potty mouth.

I did 50 miles in January, and my goal is to go 50+ in February. I'm about 10 mile shy with four days to go...

DATE...............MILES...............TOTAL
2/1.....................REST..................0.00
2/2.......................6.50...................6.50
2/3.......................5.00.................11.50
2/4.......................5.00.................16.50
2/5.....................REST.................16.50
2/6...................... 7.50..................24.00
2/7.....................20.00..................44.00
2/8.....................REST.................44.00
2/9.......................6.25..................50.25
2/10.....................4.00..................54.25
2/11...................REST.................54.25
2/12.....................6.00..................60.25
2/13.....................4.75..................65.00
2/14...................12.75..................77.75
2/15...................REST.................77.75
2/16.....................5.25..................83.00
2/17...................REST.................83.00
2/18...................REST.................83.00
2/19.....................4.25..................87.25
2/20.....................3.00..................90.25
2/21...................REST.................90.25
2/22...................REST.................90.25
2/23.....................8.00..................98.25
2/24.....................6.25................104.50
2/25.....................5.00................109.50







Upcoming races:
May 14, 2016 Glacier Ridge Trail Ultra 50K (Portersville, PA)
June 4, 2106 38 Mile Night Fun Run (Kettle Moraine State Forest, WI)
October 1, 2016 Cloudsplitter 100 Mile (Pine Mountain, KY)

That looks quite hilly. But also amazing!

Even if I'm a little late to join the party: I like the long run discussion and enjoyed reading it a lot :-)

It's especially interesting for me because the "25/33%" rule is the one running rule I break a lot of the time. Maybe because, if I'm completely honest, I always feel like it "doesn't apply to me", but rather to people who run a lot:
If I ran 6 times per week, and my 5 runs during the week would be an average of 10km long, then I could run 25km as long run and still have the long run at 33% of the weekly distance..

However, I don't run nearly that often - I try for at least 4 times per week, but sometimes the only way to squeeze in run number four is doing it at the gym before strength training. Since my gym has a "max 30 min" rule for cardio machines, and my 5k PR happens to be slightly below 30 min, it's not surprising that the extra distance I can get in that way is rather limited. Right now, I'm considering to drop my crosstraining day completely (since it turned out cross-country skiing is not my sport at all). Then I could add another running day. But so far I planned my training with 4 run days.
So, if for example my midweek runs are 8km + 13km + 4km, and I wanted the long run to be 25%-33% of that, that would put the long run at 8km to 12.5km - which happens to be actually shorter than one of the runs during the week! Rather than doing that, I'd probably have no qualms about doing 17km as a long run. Even if that means the long run will be 40% of the weekly milage, I don't feel like that is excessive compared to the length of the other runs.

As a more extreme example: In the past, when I was running only 3 times per week, I used to have weeks like 5km + 7km during the week, with a 10km long run on the weekends, i.e. making up more than 45% of the weekly distance. But with three runs per week, the only way to have the long run at 33% would be to run the same distance all the time - that just didn't make any sense to me. It just doesn't work until you run longer distances and more often.

There are reasonable arguments for the "25/33%" rule.
But on the other hand, I was chatting to a guy at the running store (another customer) a while ago, who was vehemently against adding more runs for the sole purpose of "getting the percentage down". His argument was that if I went from three midweek runs to, let's say, five 10km runs, that wouldn't prepare me better for a 20km run on the weekend. Sure, the long run would only be 30% of the week that way, but it would still be twice as long as my other runs, and I'd have only one non-running day and therefore less time to recover.
His advice was instead to try to have one "medium long" run in the middle of the week, which should be 75% of the long run. I found his arguments quite convincing, which is how I ended up with weeks like "8/13/4 + 17" in my training plan (8/13/6 would have been nicer, but... stupid gym treadmill time limit). I can't claim to have seen any scientific evidence to support that this is a good approach - I can only say that so far, it's worked for me (disclaimer: for me, I'm not telling anyone to distribute their run distances like that).
Of course, at that point someone else at the store joined the discussion to say that no, that's nonsense, you have to run more days per week, and then they were discussing whether "base building" or "enough recovery" were more important, with good arguments for both...

Of course, I'm only training for a half, so my long runs are near-where as long as for people training for a full marathon.

It would be interesting to see actual numbers of injuries compared to the percentage that the long run makes up, also taking into account how many runs per week the subjects do. But I don't think I've ever come across a study like that - anyone ever saw something like that?

February goal 80 miles

2/1 3.8
2/2 4.17
2/3 bad life day
2/4 4.00
2/5 3.82
2/6 preparing a Superbowl Luau
2/7 hosting a Superbowl Luau
2/8 sick
2/9 4.02
2/10 10.00
2/11 rest
2/12 snorkel 3 hours
2/13 3.25
2/14 3.52
2/15 3.34
2/16 rest
2/17 6.48
2/18 3.12
2/19 3.54
2/20 rest
2/21 6.32
2/22 2.12
2/23 8.07
2/24 travel
2/25 4.72

Total 74.29
@9voice9 speedy recovery!
@Elise4270 ouch.....please get it checked....

Upcoming races:
3/20 Big Island International 1/2 marathon
6/26 SHEPower Virtual 1/2 marathon
11/13 Las Vegas Rock n Roll 1/2 marathon

Ticker is my goal for 2016 and accumulation to date:

My first time on here for a while due to injury and it seems there's a lot of it about at the moment! I'm hoping to do my first run for 2 weeks on Monday, fingers crossed all goes well and i can get back to my half marathon training soon. Good luck to all you other injured lot, I hope you're all back on the road (or track or trail!) soon