February Recap

Hey-o!

Welp … February sure flew by! Seeing as how it has less days than all of the other months, I guess that makes sense. Although I’m fairly certain all of the other months fly by as well.

Month Recap: February 2018

Workouts: I did a lot of workouts this month! I’m doing a new thing with my training these days (post-marathon). I intended to do a separate post about it, but I have been a little short on spare time. I’ll try to give you a brief overview here …

This new program is built on Jack Daniels’ VDOT training. VDOT refers to the rate at which oxygen is consumed (or more specifically the volume of oxygen consumed per minute) and it provides a way of determining your training intensity based on a recent race performance. All of your training runs and workouts are done at either repetition, interval, threshold, marathon or easy pace.

• Repetition pace is the fastest pace and is used to improve speed and economy. Repetition pace is fast, but not necessarily “hard,” because each repetition is relatively short and is followed by a longer recovery. Repetition pace should be similar to your current one mile race pace.
• Interval pace is the next fastest (but slower than repetition) and is used to stress and improve your aerobic power (VO2 max). It takes about two minutes for you to build up to functioning at VO2 max so the ideal duration of an interval is 3 to 5 minutes each. If you go past 5 minutes at this pace, there will be anaerobic involvement, which results in blood-lactate build-up.
• Threshold pace is used to improve endurance. Examples of threshold pace runs are steady, tempo runs or intermittent runs, also called cruise intervals. So this would be comfortably hard running for either a steady 3 to 4 miles or repeated runs of 5 to 15 minutes each, with 1 to 3 minutes of rest between the runs.
• Marathon pace is used to experience race pace conditions for those training for a marathon or simply as a slower alternative to threshold pace.
• Easy pace is used to promote the physiological benefits that build a solid base from which higher-intensity training can be performed. Easy pace is a crucial, but often overlooked part of training.

Here are my actual workouts from February (color coded based on the above-referenced paces, because I am cool (i.e., a nerd) like that):

3 mi. WU, 2 X 2 miles (12:40 (6:20 avg.), 12:28 (6:14 avg.)), 1 mile (6:11), 2 mi. CD

3 mi. WU, 3 X 2 miles (12:48 (6:24 avg.), 13:24 (6:42 avg.), 13:24 (6:42 avg.)), 2 mi. CD

2 mi. WU, 5 X 1K (3:42, 3:40, 3:42, 3:45, 3:49), 2 mi. CD

2 mi. WU, 3 miles (6:39, 6:21, 6:19), 2 miles (6:23, 6:20), 1 mile (6:14), 2 mi. CD

3 mi. WU, 5K time trial (6:04, 6:14, 6:29), 5 mi. CD

 2 mi. WU, 4 X 1200 (4:31, 4:34, 4:39, 4:51), 2 mi. CD

 2 mi. WU, 3 X 2 miles (12:43 (6:21 avg.), 12:38 (6:19 avg.), 12:32 (6:16 avg.)), 2 mi. CD

14 mi. LR w/ 2 miles at 6:42 & 6:38

2 mi. WU, 2 X 1 mile (6:20, 6:17), 2 X 1000 (3:46, 3:50), 2 X 400 (1:23, 1:23), 2 mi. CD

2 mi. WU, 6 mi. tempo (6:27 avg.), 1 mi. CD

2 mi. WU, 3 miles (6:40, 6:28, 6:28), 1 mile easy, 2 miles (6:38, 6:29), 1 mile easy, 2 miles (6:36, 6:29), 2 mi. CD

2 mi. WU, 1 mile (6:22), 2 X 1000 (3:44, 3:50), 2 X 200 (39, 39), 2 mi. CD

Favorite workout: I’ve really enjoyed switching things up a bit. A lot of these workouts vary the paces and the length of the intervals and the recoveries during each run, which keeps things interesting. My favorite workout was the 3, 2, 1 threshold workout. The workout was 3 miles at threshold pace, 3 minutes of recovery (easy pace), 2 miles at threshold pace, 2 minutes of recovery (easy pace) and 1 mile at threshold pace. The workout flew by and I loved that after the first set, I was already half way done with the hard part of the workout.

Races: A big goose egg. I can’t believe that I didn’t run any races. This was my first month without a race since December of 2015. How crazy is that? Let me answer for you … very. I didn’t even realize that I had that much of a streak going until I just thought to myself, “I can’t remember the last time I wrote a monthly recap and didn’t have at least one race.” Ha. I am planning to more than make up for my lack of February racing during March though. I’ve got plans for 4 (potentially 5) races in March!

Favorite race: Sad face.

Paces: My paces ranged from 6:04 to 9:07.

Miles: 271!

Longest run: 14.75 miles. Nothing too long in February, as my training was more focused towards 5K and 10K type of races.

Shortest run: 3.5 miles. This was an easy double one afternoon where I was short on time and couldn’t get my standard 5 miles in.

Rest days: I took two unplanned rest days (both on Thursday). The class I am teaching this semester is on Wednesday nights. I typically don’t get home until around 9:30 and I’m not getting to be until close to 11 (which is about 3 (or 4 :)) hours later than I prefer). I usually set my alarm to run Thursday morning before work, but I don’t think that has actually happened yet. A few days I have gone after work on Thursday, but otherwise, it just becomes a good day to take a rest.

Strength training: I am pretty consistently getting in 5 to 10 minutes of strength work each day. I know that doesn’t sound like much, but it’s better than nothing and it definitely adds up over time.

Other activities: We’ve gotten really into disc golf and ping-pong recently! I played disc golf 3 times this month and Daniel and I have been playing ping-pong pretty much every day for about a week now.

Funny story … we’ve had a ping-pong table for several years now, but it’s been in storage. We were planning to take the table over to a friend’s house last weekend. We borrowed a truck from one of Daniel’s co-workers, loaded the table up (using a life jacket to keep it from scratching the bed of the truck (naturally)) and headed to make the exchange. Well … we only got about half a mile before the truck started smoking pretty badly. We weren’t sure what to do at this point, so we returned the truck to its owner, explained what happened and decided to just “wheel” the ping-pong table down the street to our house. Thankfully, we only live about half a mile from Daniel’s co-worker, so that *seemed* easy enough.  Turns out, the wheels on ping-pong tables aren’t exactly “street-legal,” and we had some major malfunctions along the way. Daniel basically ended up having to carry one end of the table. I had on the life jacket, was carrying 6 ping pong racquets, an entire container of ping-pong balls and also two coffee mugs that we found in storage that we wanted to bring home and we were pushing a ping-pong table down the road. It was quite a sight … but now that we have the table at home, we are thoroughly enjoying it!

Coming up: March is going to be the month of the 10K! I’m headed to Birmingham for the Wine 10K this weekend and then every other weekend in March there is a local 10K (Leprechaun Chase, Spring Fever Chase and Azalea Trail Run). I might try to do them all … because, why not?!

Happy Friday! I hope you guys have a wonderful weekend!