April 2019 Monthly Running Challenge

Great race @polskagirl01 !

I think I may actually make 50 miles this month. This was my real goal, with a stretch of 60. Since I haven't felt good the last couple of weeks, there was a whole lot of walking and not much running going on, but at least I put in the miles and got some exercise. I am still coughing some, but not half as much as I did yesterday and I was able to sleep pretty good last night. I hope this means I'm on the mend.

Awesome job @polska_girl! Way to kick it in the end - that's impressive!

Thank you all for the congrats on my Spartan race. I'm recovering pretty well. A bit stiff and sore all over but not horrible, considering.

A little backstory before the recap (which I'll try to keep brief) - some of you may remember that I did a Winter Spartan Spring back in March (4 miles) and just loved it. It was tough but the team was so fun. So when they said they were doing a Beast next (13+ miles), I was hesitant for sure about this huge jump up, but didn't want to miss out on the fun so ultimately signed up. I knew from the previous race I wanted to work on upper body stuff but didn't have a lot of time to do that. I did practice rope climbing though, as I reported last week - I was able to climb the rope. But I ended up with a huge rope burn that ultimately got infected and was a weepy mess. I went to my doctor on Thursday (a week after the rope burn happened) and she said she didn't think I should run, and I definitely shouldn't try to climb a rope. I said, but what if I did it anyway? Ultimately she rolled her eyes and drew a line around the wound and said if the redness exceeded that line I should not run. And she banned me from doing the muddy water obstacles and put me on antibiotics.

So with that, I headed to New Jersey on Friday night. The wound did not look great, but it didn't EXCEED the line so I went ahead. I wore long pants at least, and kept it bandaged. The morning started out chilly and the wind was pretty intense, but died down a bit by the time we started at 11:45. Given our late start, we were kind of worried about being on the course when it got dark, but I somehow managed to forget my headlamp after being the one to remind everyone on the team about it.

The course was on a ski resort in the Catskill Mountains and the elevation for this race was insane. We started out heading on a long uphill - seriously it seemed to go on forever. There was a fairly long stretch before hitting obstacles, and this race was much more hiking/running between obstacles than the shorter one. I can't clearly remember all the obstacles, I think there were around 30 total. The first couple of them were hard and all upper body strength with rings and ropes and bars. I was feeling pretty bad about my chances of doing any obstacles at that point. Then we got to a better stretch of doable things. Lots of walls to climb over, heavy things to pull or carry, cargo nets, etc. The cargo nets, both A-frame and vertical were my favorites. Fortunately for me they closed the two water/mud obstacles by the time we got there because people in the morning were getting hypothermia from them. A lot of the obstacles were different from the last race. There was a Tyrolean Traverse where you had to hang upside down on a rope and pull yourself across which I was happy to accomplish. Oh, and the sandbag carry was nuts. We had just finally had a little downhill stretch and there it was straight back uphill and back down with that stupid thing. And then we could see that right after that the course went right back uphill again. There was a lot of despair at that point.

Overall, I think I failed about 9 of the obstacles which is not great but I was happy with what I was able to do. The 13+ miles turned out to be 14.7 according to my Garmin (13.1 according to the race website) and it was brutal the whole time. The uphill parts just kept going and the downhills were steep and killed the knees. It had rained all day the day before and there was a ton of mud, deep sucking mud pits to go through and try not to lose a shoe.

I ran what I could but it wasn't much. Mainly I just tried to keep going and not stop until I got to the top of each hill. There was a lot of time waiting for the team, which helped to catch your breath. It was such a long grind. The very end featured 3 obstacles really close to the finish, an inverted wall, a sandbag hoist and the rope climb! I managed the first two but the rope climb I had practiced for and succeeded in last week was not happening. My arms were too weak at that point and I couldn't wrap my leg without it being incredibly painful on my wound, so I had to let that one go. The end was a short, cruel, uphill and back down to jump over a fire and cross the finish line. I finished in 7:34:38 and thank the lord it was not dark yet. We skipped out on most of the post-race festivities but shoveled in some food and headed back to our rented house to collapse.

I'm not as bad as I feared today, but my calves are definitely the most upset with me. My infected rope burn seems marginally better, I think. It's going to be a week of trying to recover before another race next Saturday, which I will definitely be taking easy.

Sorry, I failed on being brief. A few pics of the course map and elevation below - plus the bling. I now have 2 of the 3 pieces of the Trifecta "pie". They are magnetized and stick together which is kind of cool. It's going to take a little while to consider whether I'm up for completing the third piece - which fortunately is "only" 8+ miles but given the brutality of this one I didn't have that same "OMG so fun" feeling I did after the sprint. But I do feel really proud of having done this at all.

Does anyone else wonder whether Kipchoge is human or is it just me?

PastorVincent wrote: »

eleanorhawkins wrote: »

Having some doubts and would like to pick the brains of the more experienced runners round here. I know none of you are doctors or trainers and whatever I do is under my own responsibility etc etc etc, just looking for opinions!
As most of you know, I trained for and ran a HM in December. It was probably too much too soon for someone still pretty new to running, and led to injury and having to take time off then start over from scratch. I completed c25k again, followed by an 8km training plan which I finish this weekend. My plan had been to then start a 15km plan, followed by a couple of weeks to move from 3 to 4 runs per week then start a HM plan with an aim to running my local HM on November 3rd.
This would result in wave-like cycles, with total weekly mileage increasing during each separate plan then dialling right back down to start the next. Seemed like a really good idea when I mapped it all out.

Btw I know there's a mistake in next week's mileage, after swapping the 2 mile run on the plan for a 7km race it will actually be 7.5 miles

Now I'm wondering whether the dialing back parts are worth it, or whether I might as well just maintain the distances (maybe with a cut-back week once a month) until I reach the weeks when the mileage increases again...
Thoughts?

IN GENERAL: Build miles for 3 weeks, then do a cut back week.
IN GENERAL: 10% increase week to week is a reasonable target
IN GENERAL: Taper before races HM or longer. 1-2 weeks taper for Marathon 1/2-1 week for HM
ALWAYS: Rest days matter.
ALWAYS: Listen to your body and adapt plans as you go

That help at all?

I agree with this sound advice.

@katharmonic that detailed description makes it even more impressive that you got through that in one piece. My hat is off to you!!!!

7 miles this morning. Felt much hotter than 66F. Although it isn't even May, decided it was time to start running shirtless. It felt great not to be weighted down by 5 lbs. of sweaty shirt hanging off of me. Was taking it fairly easy, and was going to go especially easy the last two miles, but then got slowed way down due to someone was walking their 3 dogs and blocking the whole path, and couldn't go around because of car traffic. So just putted along until he hit the corner, then I sped up just to try and make up a little time, and just kept the pedal down until then end of the mile. It was only 0.5 miles of 'fast' running, but felt good. I really need to see what my mile time is these days. Haven't done that in years.