Week in review Sept. 23-29: Big work week, big training week

Not a bad variety of stuff.

Last week was rough with a Big Work Event so I had to be super strict about managing my workout schedule. It was mostly good news: I did pretty much everything I wanted to do, I only took off the day I had preemptively written off as a wash, and I never had to wake up earlier than my usual weekday alarm to fit in a workout. Yay!

Otherwise, it was a good week: Nothing spectacular, but a good foundational layer that will hopefully be something I can keep building on. Three trainer rides, three runs, two weights sessions, some PT, and a bit of yoga. Swimming has long been off the back burner and in the deep freeze, but I am optimistic I can work at least one session per week back into my schedule soon.

Running was probably the greatest victory this week, with an easy run with my husband; a “speed” run that included a mile split of 8:04, although that has an asterisk because I had to stop for traffic twice; and a long-ish run of 6.5 straight miles. I am really feeling like the proverbial tortoise here, slowly chugging away for incremental progress. Don’t get me wrong; I am happy with this progress. Hitting 6.5 miles was a victory because now I feel like I could run a last-minute 10K with no issues, should one come up.

My knee also behaved pretty well all week. I had the odd twinge and pang of discomfort here and there, but nothing that progressed to the level of pain. I also haven’t ridden my bike outside or longer than an hour and a half in two weeks. As long as I don’t overdo it, it seems to cooperate. I hope that slowly, slowly, I can push the limit of what “overdoing it” is.

Anyway, by the numbers, last week as:

Bike: Three times, all on the trainer as two shorter rides and one longer ride, for 55 fake trainer miles in about 3:36. The rides that used to feel super hard are feeling slightly less super hard, and I know that I am due for another FTP test soon. Even if I still can’t ride very long, I feel like I am making slow but steady progress here just with my consistency.

Run: Three times, all on the road, for 15 miles in about 2:33. Not my best week, and my easy run was very slow at my husband’s pace (although I did do an extra lap of our route and caught up to him later), but the speed is starting to feel more like speed and the long runs are starting to feel more like long runs. I am hoping to do a 5K if not a 10K before the weather turns.

Weights: Twice, one video and one barre class, for about 2:25 total, which includes an extra few minutes after both of these for some chin-up and pull-up practice. I’m not sure why, but I got it into my head that I was going to be good at pull-ups and chin-ups, so I am going to figure it out or die trying. I can do 3-5 at a time from standing, but the hanging ones are a LOT harder and I can only do 1 or 2 at a time. I am getting there.

PT: Two sessions of my latest running form homework, plus a few extra minutes to roll out my quads and calves, for about 1:10 total.

Yoga: One session of about 15 minutes. Even that short session of mostly hip openers and hamstring stretches felt amazing.

Total: 11 sessions in – get this – about 9:59. Argh! I couldn’t have done one more minute??? Oh, well.

I had to go back in my logs to FEBRUARY to find the last time I broke 10 hours. If I can keep going with this routine with another week, I’m sure can hit 10 this coming week. Also, I didn’t realize this, but I did a LOT of doubles last week. I doubled up with ride + weights video after work Monday, run + PT after work Tuesday, and a two-a-day of run in the morning and barre in the evening on Thursday. Sunday I did a whole bunch of stuff (run + PT + yoga), but that’s how I like to spend my Sundays anyway.

Overall, it was a good week and I hope I can have another good week this week. And I hope you have a good week, too. Good weeks for everybody!

It was a rough week, but I made it

My work is done with its Big Event and I survived. I even managed to squeeze in most of my workouts, which was amazing.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were pretty normal, with workouts after work.

Thursday, I arranged to take "pre-emptive flex time" in the morning, so I did a double of a speed run before I went to the office and barre afterward. Yes, I made it to barre for the first time in a while. Yay!

Friday I had to work late so I got up early and did 1.5 hours on the trainer before going in late. Not ideal, but I made it work. My husband brought me coffee toward the end, haha. I can't say I'd ever drank coffee on the trainer before.

I didn't try to squeeze anything in before or after work yesterday (Saturday); I ran my usual errands in the morning and my brain was cashed by the end of the day. Today I enjoyed my typical long-ish Sunday run. Yay again for being back on a schedule!

More details later. Right now I am happy to report that everyone survived and is still employed (as far as I know!)

The perfect meme for this week.

Week in review Sept. 16-22: Hopefully back into a routine

Half trainer rides, half other.

I’ve been lying low this past week, and haven’t had much to write about anyway. After some knee pain late last week/early this week, I was just thrilled to get back into something resembling a routine and run a few miles without having to stop. Hooray, small victories!

I took Monday off training to let my knee recover and I don’t remember what else I did that day, which means I probably sulked around the house all evening. I did get back into it with an easy trainer ride Tuesday and an easy run Wednesday, and by then most of the leftover pain and inflammation was gone.

I’m still not sure what happened, but my best guess is that I just overdid it on my bike ride last Saturday. Which is kind of depressing because it was only a bit longer than 2 hours on a not-very-hilly route. I hope this doesn’t mean I can never ride for longer than 1.5-2 hours again, because I do like longer rides once in a while. I don’t know what to do about it right now except continue to strengthen my legs and keep working on the trainer. I really don’t want to think about chicken cartilage injections yet, ugh.

Anyway, after a day off the rest of the week turned out to be:

Bike: Three times, all on the trainer, for 50.5 fake miles in about 3:33. This included one very easy and one pretty easy ride during the week, and a longer trainer ride on Saturday. I slept in too late to make it to my usual Saturday route after errand, but it was hot anyway and I didn’t want to re-aggravate my knee, so I’m fine with how it played out.

Run: Three times, all on the road, for 16.25 miles in about 2:46. Not bad! This worked out to be an easy run on Wednesday after my knee was feeling better, half-mile pickups for a Fast Friday run, and a long-ish run Sunday during which I hit 6 miles running, for the first time since February. For both Friday and Sunday’s runs, I felt like I was working HARD without the paces to show it, but it was pretty hot both days and especially humid on Friday. I don’t think there’s any cause for alarm just yet, as it’s probably just a running fitness issue. I had a few knee twinges Wednesday at about the 2-mile mark but everything else was pretty unremarkable.

PT: I only managed one PT session this week of about 30 minutes. I totally forgot to roll my quads and calves afterward.

Yoga: I dusted off the mat for one 15-minute session of mostly hips and downward dogs. I felt a little less stiff afterward, which should be the smack in the face I need to make this a regular thing.

Total: 8 sessions in just longer than 7 hours. No complaining here, especially with a day off. I am grumpy with myself that another week has gone by without any weight training. I also had good intentions to get to the pool on Saturday, but I got delayed. Harumph.

I’m still a little stiff and sore to kick off this week but I think that is just normal aging/training/sitting at a desk all day rather than inflammation from overdoing it. It is doing to be a VERY busy work week later in the week, so I’m going to try to front-load some workouts and get up early a couple of days. We’ll see. My main goal is to survive but if I can do that AND get in some decent training, well, that will be icing on the cake.

I hope you all are having a great start to the week.

Week in review Sept. 9-15: Run, ride, ouch

Even ending the week on a down note, it was still a good amount of bike and run.

As I grumbled about yesterday, my knee was really bothering me late Saturday and all day Sunday, to the point where I was limping around the house. A long run yesterday was out of the question, and today became a rest day as well.

I’m a bit befuddled because I don’t think I had an out-of-the-ordinary high volume week or anything like that. My usual weekly load these days is three runs and three rides, maybe one ride outside, and some weight training and PT sprinkled in. The only thing I can think of is that I logged my fastest 40K since getting my new Garmin almost two years ago, but that was still far slower than my race 40K PR. I'm not breaking any land speed records, here.

Even if the week ended on a down note it was still mostly good. I did a "long" run on Monday to make up for not running last weekend, and I did get to ride outside for what is probably one of the last times of the season. Wednesday's and Friday's runs both had the added adventure of dodging thunderstorms.

And, I got to enjoy some non-training aspects of life, too: Scoring some deals shopping with my mom, taking a nap one afternoon, ordering in shawarma for debate-watching food, dying my hair a fun shade of purple, etc. You know, the usual stuff. 

The workout stuff broke down to be:

Bike: Three times, two on the trainer for 31 fake miles and one road ride for 35 miles, for about 4:17 in the saddle total. I keep working at those Trainer Road rides, and the outdoor spin was glorious: Beautiful weather, body felt fine, small amount of annoying people, etc.

Run: Three times, all on the road, for 15.25 total miles in about 2:38. It's my best total weekly mileage since I had slowly, slowly worked up to double-digit long runs in February. This included a "speed" run with some quarter-mile pickups and they all felt good, so I'm calling this week a running success.

PT: Just one homework session plus some rolling of my quads and calves for about 35 minutes.

Total: 7 sessions in about 7:30. Eh, it's still more than once per day for an hour per day, so I can't be too mad at that.

The good news is my knee is already feeling better today with a day of rest. I'll try an easy ride tomorrow to test it out, and go from there. As mad as I was yesterday, I'm relieved that it's mostly better today. Hopefully it was just a bit of inflammation and I can get on with my life. We'll see.

A rest day, not by choice

I was NOT happy when I got up this morning to find my knee was killing me. It hurts in the same place that sent me to the orthopedist in the first place almost two years ago, deep in the knee joint.

That turned out to be a chondral fissure, which doesn't have a lot of treatment options. This hurts the same way — hurts to stand on it, hurts to bend too deeply, hurts when I put pressure on the back of the knee, uncomfortable when I straighten it. So yeah, I have been in a grumpy mood all day.

I have either ran or biked every day Monday through Saturday, but I'd hardly call it high volume. As far as running goes, I did a "long" run of 5.5 miles Monday; a half easy, half speedy 4-miles through some storms on Wednesday; and another 4 with quarter-mile pickups on Friday.

My Tuesday and Thursday rides were my normal hour-ish Trainer Road rides, and I did ride longer outside on Saturday, but for me a "long" ride is 35 miles in a bit longer than 2 hours. Really, I'm going to re-injure myself on 13.5 running miles and three rides per week??? Are you kidding me?

I'm angry and frustrated that I am STILL dealing with this with no good reason. I have been cycling twice on the trainer and once on the road during the weekend all summer and my knee has felt fine. And it makes me mad that I used to run 50-mile weeks with no problems and suddenly when I do something that resembles speed work, I have problems. Or maybe not! Because I don't really know why my knee is hurting.

I could swim tomorrow but I'd have to use a pull buoy and I just dyed my hair so I don't even want to do that. At least there's one thing that will always, always be there for me: PT exercises.

Clam shells 'til I die.

NOT a good way to end the week! Harumph!

Week in review Sept. 2-8: Migraine Monday, Work in the Kitchen Wednesday, and a Way Too Much Weekend

Bleh.

As far as training goes, it was a dud of a week. It was a combination of a sick day and a couple of other random occurrences that made it feel like the training gods were against me. I got a lot of other stuff done but unfortunately training had to take a backseat.

I had good intentions to get up early Monday, Labor Day, and do a trainer ride before I headed to barre. As soon as I sat up the world spun around me and I wanted to barf. I get vertigo with a migraine sometimes and I am pretty sure that’s what was going on. So instead of a nice workout, I spent the majority of the day lying flat on the couch. Ugh!

I felt better later and did a run after work Tuesday, but by Wednesday we were out of food since I hadn’t had a chance to meal prep on Monday. So, that day became a garden and kitchen day. I had high hopes I would be able to squeeze in a trainer ride but there was just too much to do. On the plus side, I didn’t have to worry about too much cooking for the rest of the week.

I did do a nice trainer ride and a decent speed run on Thursday and Friday, but Saturday we were in my husband’s college town all day for football. I would have had to get up at something like 5:30 a.m. to fit in a workout before we took the dogs to my parents’ and … I just wasn’t doing that on a Saturday. Running errands Sunday afternoon ended up taking WAY longer than expected, and between that and food prepping for this week, I ran out of time to fit in another trainer ride. On another plus side, I did hit more than 10,000 steps both Saturday and Sunday, so not all was lost.

By the time evening rolled around last night I was ready to cut bait on the week and start over fresh today. My disappointing week turned out to be:

Run: Twice for about 9.25 miles in about 1.5 hours. Running was the most exciting part of the week: Tuesday’s run included a sprint home before I got struck by lightning, and then going out again after the storm moved out to finish on an even mileage. Friday’s run included some decent progressively faster miles, the last at 8:14, although I needed a few walk breaks in there. I’m sure that my run fitness will eventually return and the walk breaks will be fewer and farther between.

Bike: One trainer ride for 16 fake trainer miles in just longer than an hour.

Total: Three sessions in about 2.5 hours.

It was definitely nothing to write home about this week. I’m not always going to be able to prioritize training and that has to be OK since, you know, I do have other things going on in my life. I have a couple of stressful events planned for later in the week and I am hoping staying on a solid training schedule for the next few days will help with reduce some of the anxiety that will come along with that. The bar it pretty low and I am looking to clear it!

August in review: 13 is my lucky number, again

Almost half of all my August training hours were spent in the saddle.

For two months in a row now, I’ve logged 13 bike rides and 13 runs. The rest of my training isn’t where I’d like it to be, but I’ll take this as an omen that this consistency with the bike and run will pay off eventually. Nothing like turning an unlucky number into something good, right?

Overall, August was a good month both for training and other. We kicked off the month celebrating a family wedding and spending time with other family in town for the party. I took a PTO day and rode my bike in a park I hadn’t been to in years. I had a running evaluation. I lounged by the pool (and enjoyed no small amount of sparkling rosé) with family and friends on many separate occasions. I ate a lot of brunches out (truly the best meal of the day). I went kayaking with my in-laws, ran a 5K, and enjoyed fresh veggies from our garden. I finally went to a Detroit Tigers baseball game. I slowly added run distance and even something resembling speed work occasionally.

Public school kids all went back today so there is definitely an “end of summer” feeling in the air. Summer took so long to get here with our super wet spring, I am already bummed that evening sunlight and warm temperatures will be over with before we know it. But, of course there are a lot of good things about fall to look forward to: apple cider, cool morning runs, etc. The years I was doing triathlons and a fall marathon, I would always move my long runs to Saturdays after the last tri of the year, which coincided perfectly with me becoming a football widow. I am hoping to get in at least one more Saturday outdoor ride this year!

August, you were good to me. As far as training numbers, it was:

Total bike time over the past 11 months.

Bike: 13 sessions, 3 road rides for a total of 88 real miles and 10 trainer session for 173.5 additional fake miles, for 17:55 total. That’s almost 18 hours in the saddle this month! It’s my best month as far as time in years. I had one more road ride this month compared to last month, which accounts for the additional time and real mileage. Not too shabby at all!

Total run time over the past 11 months.

Run: 13 sessions, all on the road, for 50.58 miles in about 9:18. This included a fun 5K, which also accounts for the uneven total mileage. The Type A personality in me always goes back and forth on ending the month on an even number or ending the last run of the month on an even number, and this month getting to 50 and then some won out. Since the race went well without having to take regular run intervals, I ran most of the rest of runs this month without them, only walking when I felt I needed to or when I needed a drink.

Weights: 5 sessions of 3 videos, 1 barre class, and 1 heavy/body session for about 5:25 total. Ideally I should be lifting twice a week but since this was consistent across the month, I can’t be too mad.

PT: 7 sessions of my new homework from my running evaluation for about 3:55 total. Most of these included 5 or so minutes rolling out my quads and calves afterward after I was advised they were all tight. I don’t know yet if it’s helping but it sure hurts when I’m doing it, which makes me think it is indeed necessary.

Yoga: Only one 15-minute session. Meh, I’m not happy about this. I’ve gotten out of my routine.

Total: 39 sessions in about 36:48 – the best month I’ve had so far this year, with the same number of sessions and three more minutes than June. Hooray!

Not everything is going awesomely, but I am feeling pretty good that I’m keeping up a good cycling routine, slowly rebuilding my run, lifting weights consistently, and settling into a PT habit. It’s given me a good base and helped me to have a good month training-wise. I’m hopeful I can build on that as we move into fall.

Week in review Aug. 26-Sept. 1: Not bad for the last unofficial bit of summer

Unfortunately, this Labor Day holiday has been a dud so far. I had good intentions to wake up early and do a trainer ride before barre class, but as soon as I got out of bed the world started spinning around me. I sometimes do get vertigo with a migraine, and I was lucky enough to avoid the pain and light sensitivity this time, but I was confined to the bed and couch for a couple of hours until the spinning sensation stopped.

But I had a couple of furry nurses and my Oscar the Grouch shorts.

But while the world was spinning only as fast as normal last week, it was pretty good as far as training goes, especially since it was the last unofficial weekend of summer. Sad face! I knew I had plans Tuesday evening and had to work Wednesday evening, so I was able to plan ahead and rally for a run Wednesday morning before my long day. I ran out of time to hit the bike route closed to car traffic on Saturday, but I did a nice long trainer ride that day in addition to two other rides. I also did my usual three runs for a pretty well-rounded week.

My runs went pretty well. My morning run was slower than usual, as morning runs usually are for me. My Friday "speed" run (three half-mile pickups) went pretty well and I had no knee pain! I did have a couple of twinges on my Sunday "long" run but nothing that stuck around too long, so that was a relief. I'm up to 5 miles running; yes, I have a long way to go, but that is about 4.5 miles longer than I could do without pain a few months ago, so I'll take it!

A nice solid amount of biking and not too shabby for running and other.

Overall, I can't complain about the week's training:

Bike: Three times, all on the trainer, for 57.5 fake trainer miles in about 3:40.

Run: Three times, all on the road, for 14.5 miles in about 2:32.

PT: Three times for about 1:45.

Weights: One video plus extra chinup and pullup practice for about 1:05.

Total: 10 sessions (!) in about 9:12.

This was the first time since the week of July 4th that I hit 9 hours (something about summer holidays?) and I'm happy with my continued, even if slow, improvement in my running. It wasn't a rock star week, but it was another week of consistency.

I hope you had a good long weekend and that your return to a routine tomorrow goes as calmly as possible!