Monday: 6 miles easy
Tuesday: 3 mile warmup, 7 miles at marathon pace by HR
Wednesday: 5 miles AM/ 3 mile warmup, 3.5 mile tempo, 15 minute jog, 5 x 45'' hill sprints, 2 mile cd
Thursday: 5 miles easy AM/ 5 miles easy PM
Friday: 21 miles. 13 easy, 3 fartleck marathon pace/7:30, 4 at MP effort (without looking at watch), CD
Saturday: 10 miles backpacking
Sunday: 10 miles backpacking
So, as you might imagine, this week beat me up a little bit. Tuesday's marathon heart-rate workout went really well, after I took off my tech tee (apparently, the combination of wind and tech material makes the heart-rate monitor freak out). I was to keep my HR between 155 and 165 for 5-7 miles, including a back-off on the pace as I tired. I felt really good! My splits were pretty consistently clustered around 6:40, which is goal marathon pace. It looks like 2:55 is going to be within reach at Eugene!
Wednesday, I went to work out with Club Northwest, The group to run with if you're a fast runner in Seattle. I had a nice tempo, where we ran 3.5 miles at about 6:08 pace on average (we were supposed to be more like 6:15, whoops!). After 15 minutes of jogging around, we headed over to do some hill sprints. Most of the hill workouts I've done this season have been at least 1:30 in length, so these all-out sprints were very tough for me. By the last one, I knew I'd be pretty busted for Thursday. It was fun to have some fun and fast people to run with; since I've been out on the West Coast, I've been hitting the Burke Gilman trail all alone.
On Friday, I was rather worried about my long run because my legs were still heavy and sore from Wednesday. For the first 12 miles, I ran out to Green Lake (a hilly 3 miles). Green Lake is a nice place to do some of a long run; there's a water fountain that's on year-round (unlike the water fountains in the rest of the city, that seem to be off for 9/12 of the year, even though it is never very cold here). Along the loop, there are at least 2 (maybe 3?) restrooms which seem to be open every time I go running. There are two paths, a paved one and a gravel one, around the lake, about 3 miles in length. Both are pretty flat. So, I often find myself making a couple of laps there so as to have easy water access (when I need to take a Gu). I ran 2 laps there on Friday, taking a Gu after the first, along with some water each time I passed the fountain. I ran back to the Burke Gilman trail after those two laps for the harder stuff; at that point I started doing roughly 1/2 mile pieces at marathon pace, with about a minute of 7:30 pace in between. After 3 miles of that, I turned around and did 4 miles of marathon effort work. I wasn't supposed to look at my watch much, but instead let the running flow. It was actually pretty fun. My first mile was 6:30, the next two were 6:40ish (there was some wind and they were slightly uphill, so 6:44 or something), and the last one was 6:18. I shuffled back home for one mile, showered, and rushed in to work for several highly unproductive meetings.
After work, B and I headed out to the Hoh Rainforest. We took a sweet ferry across the Puget Sound on our way. Saturday morning, we grabbed our backcountry permits and headed into the Hoh. The trail was beautiful; everything was covered in a thick blanket of green moss:
Here's a photo of me:
It rained on us for the first 5 or so miles. After that, the weather suddenly turned much colder, and the rain turned to snow. It didn't stick: everything was too wet to be frozen. I was grumgry (grumpy/hungry) around 6 miles, so we took a break to warm up and make some awesome freeze-dried food and warm up a bit. We found a sweet shelter:
called the "Happy Four Emergency Shelter". A plaque on it told us it was erected because a group of forest workers one summer got into a bit of a spat and wouldn't talk to one another and someone needed some "me time" so they built this shelter as a get-away. There were four of these workers, thus "Happy Four" became the name of the shelter.
I was in substantially better spirits after we did this, so we continued on past this shelter up to the Olympic Ranger station. On the way, B found a sweet newt that had a fluorescent orange belly. He picked it up even though he was pretty sure it was poisonous.
By the time we made it to the Ranger Station, we were pretty cold and wet. There was another shelter there, and since we hadn't really planned on the temperatures dropping into the 30s, we decided to pitch our tent inside that shelter rather than trying to find a piece of ground that wouldn't collect a large puddle under our tent if it rained/snowed all night. We made some dinner, and decided to hang out in our tent starting at about 5 pm, since it was much warmer than staying outside in the rain/snow.
At around 7, we wandered out to find several inches of snow had managed to accumulate on the very wet ground. This was somewhat worrying: first, that meant it was way colder than we thought, given how wet and muddy the ground was, and second, the snow was still falling, and the trail was unblazed and unmarked, meaning that if everything was covered in snow, it might be hard to find our way back the next morning. But at that point, it was getting dark, so we decided there wasn't much to do other than hope the trail would still be visible in the morning, or at least that the Park Rangers would come looking for people when they realized how much snow had fallen later on Sunday.
So we went to sleep. About an hour later, B claims he told me that "There was someone outside. With a light" to which I responded "I love you, too", and rolled over in my sleeping bag to fall back asleep. A few minutes later, Byron said loudly, "Hello?", and another voice responded, "Hi." I sat straight up when I heard a voice I didn't recognize, and said, "Is everything ok? Do you need help?" I was rather freaked out about someone random showing up in our shelter unannounced, albeit I was still quite groggy and somewhat confused about the whole situation. He responded, "No." I continued to babble another couple of silly questions at the man to which he responded monosyllabically. I was definitely worried he might either steal our stuff or slit our throats while we were sleeping. B was clearly also concerned; he asked if I wanted him to go out and talk to the guy. I said he didn't have to, right before the random guy said "Is it ok if I sleep in here?" I was much less freaked out once he finally offered us some information as to what he was doing. We told him that was fine, and while he was out dealing with his bear bag, B looked out and saw the man did have a sleeping bag and some other camping equipment, so he at least looked like he had a legitimate reason for being there. We eventually fell back asleep.
The next morning, we got up after almost 13 hours in the tent, made some disgusting rehydrated eggs for breakfast, and headed out into the rain/snow. The trail had been so wet, the snow didn't bury it completely and we were able to follow it on the way out. There was a huge herd of Roosevelt Elk we ran into on the way out; we tried taking a picture but my camera was way too soggy to be of any real use. Our hike home was seriously fast: it took us about 3 hours to cover 9 miles. In the last quarter of a mile, the sky opened up and there was sun! I guess we picked the wrong day to be out in the afternoon, because the weather was much nicer as we drove home than it was at any point during our hike.
All in all, it was a fun week. I didn't run Sunday night when we got home; my legs were pretty heavy and I knew the week to come was going to be intense so I wanted to be well-rested. This is definitely the most I've run in such a short block (4 miles and almost 60 miles, that is).
I've also realized I only have 6 more weeks until Eugene, and only 3 until Cherry Blossom. I guess that means I only have a few more weeks of intense training before the taper... hopefully I'll be ready!
No comments:
Post a Comment