Pre-Marathon Season Week 1 - In The Bag and Up the Hill

Welcome to Pre-Marathon Season, Week 2!

 

The Loaf

I feel like a football player . . .  in the pre-season, doing a lot of testing and planning for the months ahead.

Pre-Season Week 1 went more or less as planned: lactate threshold tests (swim, bike, run) and not much else. Establishing a baseline for the coming months.  I'm not very good about remembering to do my LT tests at the prescribed intervals, but I do try to at least keep them up semi-regularly to see how I'm progressing. I raised my LT heart rate 3 beats on the run, while the bike and the swim paces stayed more or less the same.

Just like the last year that I was successful and uninjured (2011), I'm going to keep some swimming and biking in my routine, but there will be some new speed and endurance work this time.


The bike LT test took place in the "hills" of Clermont (the only hilly place in Florida - about 1500 feet of climbing.)   It didn't end up being much of a test since I forgot to hit "lap." This included 3 climbs up 312-foot Sugarloaf Mountain. "The Loaf," as I call it, is the highest point in peninsular Florida. It probably was less of an LT test and more of a Sufferfest.


Canonical correlation output in SPSS

We also did 2 climbs of sister hills "The Wall" and 1 of Buckhill.  It was only 30 miles, but holy crap - what a way to get back on the bike after a few easy weeks.

I had to stop twice on the last climb up The Loaf, if that tells you anything.

As a bonus, last week's stats homework didn't kill me, either.  Let's hope this week's exam doesn't, either. (I'm hopeful, even though I complain a lot.)

There's a lot of craziness, but there's a lot of good stuff ahead.

Merry Chrismahannaramakwanzaakah

Merry Christmas. Whatever holiday you celebrate, enjoy it.

I'm sitting here trying not to let my family drive me crazy with their various quirks, belief systems and smoking. (How can the family who raised me be so completely different than me? I'm realizing this week that I want to be unlike them as much as (or more than) I want to be like them.) But they're my family, so I put up with it.

Besides, it's Christmas.

Haven't said much about the training. A little less than 5mi Monday, zone 1. Today was supposed to be an 8-mi pace run (8-9 minute run, 1 minute walk. My marathon pacing strategy will be Galloway-esque because I don't want to peter out at mile 20 like I did last year thanks to my lack of training). We stopped again for neighbors and to pet the donkeys, so I gave up at a little over 5 miles. The hill repeats kind wore me out. 1500 square feet is not much for most people, but it's 1200 square feet more than I'm used to.

(This is a Jesus donkey - most of the neighbors' donks are Jesus donks.)

Tomorrow? I will try to do my 8-miler, but family comes at 10, and I sleep till around 7 or 8. We'll see what happends - I can always rest tomorrow and do my 8 on Friday, cross-train Saturday and do the 13-miler on Sunday. (Realized I was on a stepback week.)

In other news, I will be doing the Disney Half Marathon in a friend's place in January as my second 13.1 on the way to the 26.2! YEEEE!

Everything>something>nothing.

Have a wonderful Christmas!