This past week has been the most challenging week of running this year.
It's a down week, a recovery week, and I've been looking forward to it for a while now. A respite.
As it arrived, my motivation dropped, my malise increased; the challenge of strapping on the boots and getting out there has continued through today's 5-mile recovery run. Worse, I skipped a run for the first time in this training plan - Wednesday's 5-mile recovery run. I wasn't feeling too well, and my legs felt fragile, so it's not that I made the decision entirely out of lack of will, but there was no voice within me to argue against the skip. No stray thought would take up that particular mantel.
I feel bad about it still - I know it's not reasonable. Of all the runs to miss, and of all the weeks, that was a good one. Another thought that added to the decision.
This malaise doesn't feel specific to running, really. More like the expected seasonal "settling in" after a few weeks of dark evenings. It hits me harder every year, it seems. An apathy or mild nihilism; evenings feel drained of value, and my sleep suffers tremendously by moving the "transition phase" of the evening from 8:30/9:00 to 4:30/5:00. Evening rolls into night, and momentum carries me right through.
Ah well — I know roughly the shape of this thing. I can press on.
I risk over-focusing on the negative here, and on a single 5-mile run that doesn't really matter, so to work against that I need to acknowledge a strong decision that I did make. I skipped the company Holiday Party on Thursday as a means of avoiding a winter illness. Instead, I made up a gym session that had had to be canceled earlier in the week. While hitting every run in this particular week does not feel critical to the overall plan, the next 3 weeks absolutely do.
Catching Covid would likely put me out for a month like it did last year around this time. I ended up taking 6 weeks away from exercise out of concern for overstressing my cardiovascular system and risking Long Covid symptoms. Maybe that was an overreaction, but it's a different proposition now anyway. Last year I needed to work back up to a 10-15 mile week. This year would be 45-55 miles. Feels like a significantly greater risk that a bout of Covid would derail training entirely.
Bugs are going around. I'm not putting myself into a bubble, but no unnecessary risks.
Twelve tomorrow. Another rainy Sunday, but this time with weather advisories after 4pm! Should be no bother if I'm done during daylight.
Next week's training is going to kick my ass. It's Block 2 of Pfitzinger's plan, which means transitioning from a focus on general endurance to an emphasis on Lactate Threshold (and endurance!). This will go for 5 weeks, with a recovery week in the middle. I've heard that Pfitz "gets hard fast", and I suspect this is where it's going to hit me. These first 6 weeks haven't been particularly challenging; I don't feel dragged down by accumulated fatigue just yet. This coming week will probably change that:
Monday: Cross-train
Tuesday: 10 miles with 5 @ LT pace
Wednesday: 4 miles recovery
Thursday: 11 miles "medium-long run"
Friday: Rest
Saturday: 7 miles + 8x100m strides
Sunday: 18 mile long run
I'm anticipating the 18-miler will be on "tired legs" after Saturday's 7+ miles, but at the end I'll have clocked 50 - 52 miles on the week and that's a milestone that means something to me.
Frankly, I loved the "tired leg" long runs from the Higdon Half Marathon plan I followed this summer. The feeling of knocking out a 2-hour run, knowing that you're more worn out than you will be on race day — I find that so gratifying, and psychologically important to me as the plan intensity ramps up.
During those runs I think ahead to my future self, waiting in the corrals, fresh from a taper, and feel a smug superiority knowing that today will be harder than any moment on race day.
Dec 03, 2023, 3 Miles into 16