Hey friends! This is a bit of a nontraditional training log, as I haven’t been doing what I would typically consider to be “traditional” training.
I got the results of my blood-work back two weeks ago. After looking over the results, John said that he had a plan in mind and I was excited to hear what he was going to suggest. Little did I know that his plan was going to be delivered in two words that most athletes don’t want to hear together … “iron protocol.” Basically this means only short, easy runs and no strenuous workouts for approximately four weeks. The idea behind it is that your body can’t recover from any sort of deficiency while you continue to train high levels.
I’m going to do an in depth review of all of the results of my blood-work in another post, but it John’s opinion, the alarming thing about the results was the drop in ferritin, iron and iron saturation since the last time I had blood-work done in January. My ferritin dropped from 37 to 22 (ng/mL), my iron dropped from 228 to 96 (ug/dL) and my iron saturation dropped from 60 to 43.7 (%). All in all, my results were pretty good. The only bio-marker that was labeled as “at-risk” was my testosterone, which was too high. Like, what the heck?! I’m curious to see what the dietitian thinks the root of that is. In the meantime, I am primarily focused on eating all of iron rich foods that I possibly can (think red meat, beans, tofu, cashews, spinach and fortified cereal), while also cooling my jets a little bit on the workout front.
The decreased iron levels definitely explain why I have been feeling tired and why dragging myself out of bed in the mornings to go run had started to feel like a chore. I’m so relieved to know that there is a scientific reason to explain the way I have been feeling. I was kind of worried that my motivation was just gone and that maybe my running “career” was on the decline. While this may or may not be true, one thing we know for sure is that if I don’t get my iron levels up, I don’t have a fighting chance to perform my best.
As a side note, if I never run another race as fast as I have in the past, I will be just fine. I feel very satisfied and proud of what I have accomplished. Do I want to run faster? Sure. Am I less of a person if I don’t? Absolutely not. This is a little bit an odd place for me to be mentally. I can’t remember a time over the past few years (or the past decade even) where I haven’t been actively working to improve my times.
Week of 09.14.20 – 09.20.20 –
Monday: Rest
Tuesday: 9 miles (7:33 pace)
Wednesday: 5 miles (9:01 pace)
Thursday: 8.25 miles (8:56 pace)
Friday: 7.5 miles (9:01 pace)
Saturday: 7.75 miles (8:56 pace)
Sunday: 6 miles (7:58 pace)
Admittedly, I did a little bit more this week than I was “supposed” to do. I truly felt like I NEEDED any semblance of normalcy in a week where everything was completely chaotic. See previous post re: Hurricane Sally for more info about said chaos. The only workout that I am “allowed” to do currently is 200 meter repeats, which I did on Sunday. This is essentially the same thing as doing a few strides. My splits were 37, 36, 36, 36, 36, 34, 35, 36, 35, 34 (this averages out to 4:44 pace). I don’t know exactly how this happened, but I felt AMAZING! Perhaps the combination of rested legs and more iron throughout the week … light bulb moment!
Week of 09.21.20 – 09.27.20 –
Monday: 6 miles (8:10 pace)
Tuesday: 4.5 miles (7:44 pace) + Pilates
Wednesday: Rest
Thursday: 8 miles (8:50 pace)
Friday: 3 miles (8:48 pace)
Saturday: 5 miles (8:56 pace)
Sunday: 8.5 miles (8:26 pace)
This week looked a lot more like what my coach had in mind. I ended the week with 35 miles, which is a fairly significant decrease in my normal training volume. I did a few more 200 meter repeats on Thursday as well. My splits were 37, 37, 37, 37, 36, 37, 37, 37, 36, 37 (this averages out to 4:56 pace). My legs didn’t feel quite as good as they did the week prior. It was humid and rainy this week whereas it had been a bit cooler and drier the week before. I’m sure this had something to do with it!
That’s all I’ve got for now. Talk to you again soon!