Although my training hasn't gone as planned due to some laziness, busy-ness, and sickness, I think I might be getting back on track. I had a nice run this AM in the pouring rain, and I was quite comfortable thanks to my fancy Brooks jacket. I blew off yesterday, but I ran a moderately hilly hour on Monday.

Apparently, my first planned race on March 4, a 10-miler, is a very hilly course. Then two weeks after that I am planning to run another hilly course, this one a 12k. I think that will be a good month to do the Lydiard hill phase. Although my base phase has been spottier than I would have liked due to aforementioned issues, I think I will be ready to do a hill phase in March. That gives me 5 more weeks of base training. I think the 10 miler will be a little slow, since I will have run nothing fast, but I'm not too concerned about that. I ran that Thanksgiving 5k on nothing fast, and while it wasn't much of a time for me, I felt it was acceptable. Now I will have many more miles under my belt, and I will be running a longer course, so I should be somewhat closer to my ability.

The tentative training plan continues with some fast V02 max work in April, and an early peak in May for a 5k and a 10k. After that, I'm not so sure. I'm considering hitting the base phase again to build up to a marathon in December, Cal International in Sacramento.

I finally ran today. I probably should have run yesterday too, but that's the way it goes sometimes. I felt good today, running only about 3 miles, but I thought it might be best to start kind of slowly my first day back after a week of being under the weather. I wore the heart rate monitor and felt like I could keep a reasonable pace and keep to 145 bpm or less. Without the heart rate monitor, I get to feeling good and I start to pick up the pace and really start rolling. I think that pace, the rolling pace, is something besides aerobic easy pace, so it's good to have the HRM.

I generally agree with what Jerry wrote about Lydiard's springing/bounding phase. (In comments for last entry.) Assume the phase is for strength training (almost seems like a plyometric) of specific muscle groups and don't worry about the pushing off thing. As for Dr. R's stuff, they aren't specifically supposed to be executed up a hill, right?

I remember reading that Dathan Ritzenhein is apparently doing short, extremely fast up hill sprints as part of training. I can't remember if it was in an interview with him or his coach where I read about it, but they were described as almost being in lieu of lower body weights. Instead it was a running-specific type of strength training. The hill was very steep as well.

All of this makes me think of a study that J told me about, which looked at the 50 meter speed of distance runners. Turned out that speed over 50m. successfully predicted speed at 5k. Go figure. Now I realize this should not be interpreted as meaning that distance runners should all go out and train like Justin Gatlin, but I wonder if those up hill bursts might help in building some strength that helps in distance races. One issue with that study is that 5k is really pretty short as distance racing goes. However, if you looked at my running club, there are only a few position changes if you compare performance at 5k and half marathon. So maybe the 50m thing would hold for longer distances.

Incidentally, I'm still laid up. I thought I'd be running today, but instead I was running a fever yesterday and had to leave work after a couple of hours. I think I'll be sitting tomorrow out as well just to make sure I've kicked this thing. A real drag as far as training goes. I had planned to be a lot higher in mileage by now, but such is life. I am heartened by my recently (slightly) improved understanding of Lydiard, where he apparently focused more on time of workout in base phase, not distance. And that makes a lot more sense for those of us who are in the 8 min/mile plus range for base mileage. J mentioned to me that my heartrate may have been elevated due to being sick when I did that first heart rate monitored run on Tuesday, and perhaps my pace at 145 will be a bit faster than that when I am not sick. A good thought.

Still dealing with the bronchitis, so I haven't done any running. I've never been sure when you should feel pretty good about starting to run after you've been sick. I worked a half day today, and I'll be at work a full day tomorrow, but work is a lot less strenuous than running. I think I'll shoot for Saturday, depending on how I feel.

lydiard

Did a little surfing on training theory today when I was home sick, and ran into this description of Lydiard's philosphy. It's a little hard to find all the related posts, I think there's five in all, but they're up there somewhere. It's a nice summary of Lydiard's training phases for someone who doesn't have the time to plough through a more detailed description. One note of interest, Lydiard's bounding or springing phase that includes a lot of up hill drills are based on a premise of biomechanics that is totally rejected by the Pose method. I certainly wouldn't write Lydiard off on that basis, but it's interesting.

December update

I've really let this blog thing go...Jerry from the pose boards reminded me that it existed. Here's a quick catch up...

Running in the dark with good Pose form was difficult because I was scared of falling down. Acting on some good advice from the pose message board, I found some streets near my house with little traffic and some regular street lamps and put together a course that I feel more confident on. That has really helped with the dark issue.

Then the rains started. Probably folks have noticed that northern California has been repeatedly pounded by storms over the last weeks and that has made running not so attractive. In a related problem to the darkness one, I was having form problems in the wet because I felt like I was going to slip and I was really sticking the landings as a result. (Active landings are a big no-no in pose.) This was causing very very tight calves and (probably related) plantar fascitis. The PF started to get kind of scary-painful, so I took 5 days off. I now have mixed feelings about this. It was probably not enough time to cure the PF. So maybe I should have taken more time off, or just run through it. In any case, the PF is still with me, though less serious than before.

Today's run was interesting, my first with a heart rate monitor in a long time. Once I got the thing adjusted properly, (it was too tight at first and reading erratically,) I found that I've been running a little harder with respect to HR than I thought. I had to slow down a little from my regular pace to stay at 145. I picked 145 based on the Hadd readings. J does his easier runs at 150. So I dunno, maybe 145 is a bit pokey. I have plans to do a max heart rate test when the tracks dry out a bit.

The bad news about today was that I felt a little sick when I woke up, decided to run anyway, and then felt really sick after I got home. I called in sick to my internship and I think I have bronchitis. I am going to have to take a day or two off I figure, because I feel better than this morning, but I don't want to stay sick. More time for the PF to heal, but I would prefer to get on with the mileage.