Split Process — or Strength vs. Endurance

I’ve got a double life going on. Sat, Sun, Tuesday I run middle-distance workouts in the park with the group. (Monday is generally a rest day). That’s hiking for warm-up, followed by sections of hill sprints, 15 and 30 second sprints on the flats or hills as the course dictates, and a winding descent to end. Often the workout is as short as 2.5 miles — a distance I formerly associated with limited time or recovery from injury. These workouts are all about strength, form, and sometimes speed.

Then Wednesday, Thursday, Friday I try to get some miles in. It’s the distance runner’s mentality. Five miles is the minimum and a standard run would be 7. The long one’s got to be 10 or more. These workouts are mostly about endurance and logging miles.

I like my routine, but this batching can’t be good in the long term. I need to move the Tuesday workout to later in the week, so I can sandwich in some distance between the hill work and sprints. Just for variety’s sake.

Here’s how it played out for most of this week:

Sunday: Took cousin out with the group. Up Amir’s steps. Daughter took a spill on the steps and sprained wrist. Some alarm, but wrist is fine. We did some racing. Best pace: 3:43 min/mile. 2.16 miles.

Tuesday: Another trip up Bee Rock, the trail, not the rock proper. Then another quarter mile attempt. Over 62 seconds. Best pace: 3:32 min/mile. 2.86 miles.

Wednesday: Big, big endurance run. Hills and long loping trails and zippy sections. Hiked up Bee Rock, proper. Did not run any part of it. Humidity was high, and the moss on the rock slippery. Potential recipe for ending of life or other unfortunate outcomes. Then ran up what they call “Purple Death” — that’s about 1000 feet. Then veered off into what might be called Beachwood* Canyon — but I’d need to confirm that. And up toward the Hollywood Sign, the road just below it. Really nice, easy pace. Then back and over Hogback Ridge, clear over to the area of the park above Silver Lake, called 5 points. And back down. 1:36      10.08 miles      9:32 min/mile

Thursday: Feeling the last couple of workouts today. Ran 7 easy without the watch, which I forgot. Was thinking I was running about an 8 minute pace, but when I got back to the car I realized it was more like 9 minute pace. Maybe it was the rain? More likely Tuesday and Wednesday just took their toll.

That puts me at 22 miles for the week with two days to go. So probably about 30 miles this week.

*Looks like it’s actually called Bronson Canyon or Brush Canyon on some of the older maps.

More Drills, Refining Workouts

1:30        5.6 miles

After a few questions, I got the response I thought was in there.

“If you can’t run the second 1000 in 3:35 then stop and run quarters.” As I suspected, running at a slower pace is just practice running at slower pace. Shorten the distance and find that pace. Then increase the distance. They say the Kenyans tend to focus more on pace, the Americans more on miles. What I really could use is a training partner. With someone else there, I think I could nail those 1000s, or at least a few more.

Both kids comported themselves honorably. They ran a tough workout, heading off in a different direction from the main group up to Amir’s Garden. Apparently the boy made a beeline to the first bench he spotted at Amir’s. The girl wants to come on a weekly basis. We all ran 15s to our parting point, then we went to a long uphill service road they call “enchilada”, as in the “whole enchilada”. I’ve not been up this road before — it would make for a fearsome run. Since we were “just” doing hill bounding, it wasn’t that bad, but trying to focus on using the hips to propel while bounding was awkward.

Then we took a not-quite-so-steep mile-long run to the top and circled back.

Observation Biomechanical and Upper Body Stress

Another great run in the park with the running group. Today it was hard work. We ran 15 second strides in the hills, to get to the steps to Amir’s Garden, which we proceeded to run in segments. After which we got to a long dirt road where we ran quite fast from pole to pole, uphill. Then after some brief walking, did another 15 second sprint uphill. Then jogged downhill. I left the Garmin in the car as it had run out of battery, no doubt the result of fiddling with it to see if I could get it to upload.

(No luck as of yet. No word from Garmin. But neither device is working from the wife’s laptop, either, so I’m quite sure it’s a Garmin problem, website specific.)

After a fair amount of hill running (almost all of it uphill), one of the runners pointed out that my right foot is pointing out about 30 degrees and that my stride was less efficient than it could be. She noted that this could also lead to back pain. That there is gold — as I do in fact experience lower back pain on the right side, from time to time. The idea that she nailed the cause of it is a minor revelation. And as I was jogging down the hill, coach’s wife hollers “tuck in that right foot!” Not something I ever would have figured out running on my own.

Did I say it was hard? As my legs were feeling good, I tried to put in a solid effort today, but started to fade around the telephone pole section. I’d guess the run was about 3 miles. I’d love to see the route on a map, especially the elevation. The surprise today was soreness, fairly early on, in the triceps.  Near the elbow. Perhaps this is more tendon than muscle. Upper body stress. Love it. I feel a lovely nap coming on.

Some observations, hearsay about the running group.

1. Nobody is training for a race.
2. They accommodate different paces with different routes, including jogging strollers, septuagenarians, and dog walkers.
3. Coach’s wife, H., 77, hikes up scrabbly trails and is not far behind while we run the intervals.
4. She is a top 5k runner in her age group.
5. Coach ran a 2:36 marathon in his day, that’s 5:57 min/mile pace.
6. At the end of my first run, the woman I was running with just shot off down the hill. When I caught up to her she was dry heaving.
7. Some grouping of them is there every day, 6:30 a.m. on weekdays, 7:00 a.m. on weekends.
8. One runner is from Ghana.