The craziness continues. It's actually really not bad. I'm still feeling quite good so far. The distance is ramping up and little aches and twinges are happening but they're not sticking around much. If things keep up like this, then all of this will be easy. Of course, that's not going to happen but everyone can dream.
Okay, so this is what I did this week, with some recap from last week.
14 weeks to go
Monday: lazy day (rest)
Tuesday: 8 mile run (7:20 min/mile) then olympic lifting for 2 hours
Wednesday: TKD practice (1:20)
Thursday: lazy day (rest)
Friday: 60 minute run on soft ground (7:30ish min/mile pace)
13 weeks to go
Saturday: 30 minute trail run
Sunday: Biking 2:37
Weight: Still at 176... but I did have two all you can eat dinners this week (Go Meat). My low was 173 this week and I'm noticing that I'm losing fat and increasing muscle mass. That's confusing, but weight loss is a long term game. We'll see what's up with time.
Clarifications
I'd like to let you into one of my little circle of secrets. When I write specific milage, it's because I know the actual mileage from running on a track and/or looking it up using Google Maps, with the walking plugin. When I write times, however, it's because I don't know the specific distance. A general rule of thumb is that I run at 7:30 min/mile pace. My bike isn't actually made for exercise riding (hybrid), so the scaling of time to distance doesn't make a lot of sense.
The mudder spirit is strong with me. When I'm counting distance and time, resting and walking does not count. That means when I stop at stoplights, the timer also stops. When I stop and walk a little (walking is for the weak, except for later...), the distance counter stops. Otherwise, I'll be cheating. Cheating is for little panzies like Fess from Canton (if you're lost, go watch more Firefly). In order to compete successfully in World's Toughest Mudder, I must stand up against the likes of Magistrate Higgins and be strong. This hill'verse didn't hand me the longest end of the stick but I took it, and.... I guess that's something.
Again, if you're lost, you need to watch more Firefly. Given that I really hope Tough Mudder was inspired by the Jaynestown episode of Firefly, to really understand the event, you need to be very comfortable with the series. (If you'd like to watch more, I do have the full season.)
So why?
As you can tell, I'm quickly ramping up the distance and the time. Last week I ran 6 miles before lifting on Tuesday and biked for 2:07. This week I ran 8 miles before lifting, ran 8-ish miles on Friday, then also increased my biking time to 2:37. That's a pretty quick pace of increasing the mileage, isn't it? Well, as crazy as I am, I'm not going to be keeping that pace up. That would just spell injuries and over training. My body would constantly be catching up with itself and never actually getting better.
So why increasing so fast right now? I'm comfortable with running for an hour (8 miles) straight. I have been for a while. I just hadn't done it in a while, so I just needed to ramp up to what I know I can repeat over an over again. A single hour of hardcore running at that quick pace will give me the cardio and muscle for at least 3 to 4 hours of World's Toughest Mudder (WTM). While that's far short of 24 plus, it's a very good place to start (cue Sound of Music).
What's the plan, Stan? I'm going to keep one of the 8 mile runs per week and begin increasing the distance on the other one. My goal for 3 weeks before to event is to be able to run 15 miles twice in two days plus also bike for 4 hours on the second day. That means that I've got 7 more miles to add in 10 weeks. Now that's quite a lot more reasonable. In addition to increasing the distance and time on the other days, the long run will increase by at least one mile per week. Some weeks may increase faster and others slower, based on how my legs and, primarily, my gimpy ankle, feels.
Wait, so why increase the biking by 30 minutes too? That gets back to the biking for 4 hours on the second day. So far I've got 2:37, which is quite close to 4 hours. I'm going to keep increasing by around 21 minutes each week. That's primarily motivated by two things (1) I feel like I can do that quite easily and (2) I'm doing a 20-21 minute loop, so life just all makes sense if I do it that way. If I do that, I'll be up to 4 hours in about 4 weeks.
That's way too early, right? Absolutely. That'll make the biking part of my last crazy training workout the easy part. It'll also mean that in about 10 weeks, I'll be prepped to be biking constantly for 6 hours straight. That'll hopefully give me the base to keep going at it for at least 12-18 hours. As for the last 6 hours... did I mention that I'm crazy?
And... how is my body holding up?
Quite well, actually. I got reminded about my injuries this week. Luckily, it's not my ankle that bothered me first. My left platellar ligament has been hurting a little during the day and also when biking. For those of you not medically inclined, that's basically my left knee. I think it's an over use injury from biking. That means that I'm taking it easy when biking to and from work and things got better by the end of the week.
My gimpy ankle hurt for the first mile of Friday's run and then again during the uphill parts of the trail run. Luckily, once I got to flatter ground and just ran through the pain, it all went away. That tells me that I'm ramping things up at a good pace. A little pain is okay, as long as it goes away relatively quickly and doesn't stick around after the run.
That brings me to the last point to cover this week: Trail Runs.
(1) Trail runs are hard. So you think you're all tough if you can run on flat ground for 4 to 10 times longer. Well, sorry son, you're wrong. Going uphill at any appreciable grade will sap your energy and your muscles... FAST. Happily, at least the first mile of my trail run was all uphill... ALL uphill. It was only 8 minutes, but it was painful. I'll need to do a lot more trail runs to get ready for WTM. Otherwise, I'm going to get zapped instantaneously.
(2) When running downhill, run on your toes and don't get too excited. If you run on your heels, you're putting all the impact of your weight, plus your momentum, into your knees. That'll get really problematic really fast. You can soften the blow by pointing your toes and allowing the ball of your foot to hit first. That way, the lever of your ankle will take some of the impact away from your knees. Now, even though it's fun to blaze down the hill, you also need to be careful. Trails turn fast and hard. You don't want to build up too much momentum or... whooops, there you go off a cliff. You can't train or race hard if you're recovering from that. So, how do you stop the momentum? Run in a sine wave (non-mathematicians call it a zig-zag). Generally this means that you're running more distance, but it also means that you're artificially decreasing the gradient of the hill. That means you build up less momentum and also get less impact on your knees (yay).
(3) Running fast uphill looks like you're a beast, but in the long run, it's not worth it. WTM is running a loop. That means that when there's an uphill, there's also a downhill. If you take your time on the uphill, you're saving energy to go faster easier on the downhill or the flat. Also, when you're looking to run for 24 hours, running up hill like a fiend is a great way to waste 30 minutes of energy in like 30 seconds. So, as much as I'm going to push it going up hills, I'm going to practice taking it a tad easier than I'd like on that part, so I don't get ahead of myself on WTM-day.
Okay, so this is what I did this week, with some recap from last week.
14 weeks to go
Monday: lazy day (rest)
Tuesday: 8 mile run (7:20 min/mile) then olympic lifting for 2 hours
Wednesday: TKD practice (1:20)
Thursday: lazy day (rest)
Friday: 60 minute run on soft ground (7:30ish min/mile pace)
13 weeks to go
Saturday: 30 minute trail run
Sunday: Biking 2:37
Weight: Still at 176... but I did have two all you can eat dinners this week (Go Meat). My low was 173 this week and I'm noticing that I'm losing fat and increasing muscle mass. That's confusing, but weight loss is a long term game. We'll see what's up with time.
Clarifications
I'd like to let you into one of my little circle of secrets. When I write specific milage, it's because I know the actual mileage from running on a track and/or looking it up using Google Maps, with the walking plugin. When I write times, however, it's because I don't know the specific distance. A general rule of thumb is that I run at 7:30 min/mile pace. My bike isn't actually made for exercise riding (hybrid), so the scaling of time to distance doesn't make a lot of sense.
The mudder spirit is strong with me. When I'm counting distance and time, resting and walking does not count. That means when I stop at stoplights, the timer also stops. When I stop and walk a little (walking is for the weak, except for later...), the distance counter stops. Otherwise, I'll be cheating. Cheating is for little panzies like Fess from Canton (if you're lost, go watch more Firefly). In order to compete successfully in World's Toughest Mudder, I must stand up against the likes of Magistrate Higgins and be strong. This hill'verse didn't hand me the longest end of the stick but I took it, and.... I guess that's something.
Again, if you're lost, you need to watch more Firefly. Given that I really hope Tough Mudder was inspired by the Jaynestown episode of Firefly, to really understand the event, you need to be very comfortable with the series. (If you'd like to watch more, I do have the full season.)
So why?
As you can tell, I'm quickly ramping up the distance and the time. Last week I ran 6 miles before lifting on Tuesday and biked for 2:07. This week I ran 8 miles before lifting, ran 8-ish miles on Friday, then also increased my biking time to 2:37. That's a pretty quick pace of increasing the mileage, isn't it? Well, as crazy as I am, I'm not going to be keeping that pace up. That would just spell injuries and over training. My body would constantly be catching up with itself and never actually getting better.
So why increasing so fast right now? I'm comfortable with running for an hour (8 miles) straight. I have been for a while. I just hadn't done it in a while, so I just needed to ramp up to what I know I can repeat over an over again. A single hour of hardcore running at that quick pace will give me the cardio and muscle for at least 3 to 4 hours of World's Toughest Mudder (WTM). While that's far short of 24 plus, it's a very good place to start (cue Sound of Music).
What's the plan, Stan? I'm going to keep one of the 8 mile runs per week and begin increasing the distance on the other one. My goal for 3 weeks before to event is to be able to run 15 miles twice in two days plus also bike for 4 hours on the second day. That means that I've got 7 more miles to add in 10 weeks. Now that's quite a lot more reasonable. In addition to increasing the distance and time on the other days, the long run will increase by at least one mile per week. Some weeks may increase faster and others slower, based on how my legs and, primarily, my gimpy ankle, feels.
Wait, so why increase the biking by 30 minutes too? That gets back to the biking for 4 hours on the second day. So far I've got 2:37, which is quite close to 4 hours. I'm going to keep increasing by around 21 minutes each week. That's primarily motivated by two things (1) I feel like I can do that quite easily and (2) I'm doing a 20-21 minute loop, so life just all makes sense if I do it that way. If I do that, I'll be up to 4 hours in about 4 weeks.
That's way too early, right? Absolutely. That'll make the biking part of my last crazy training workout the easy part. It'll also mean that in about 10 weeks, I'll be prepped to be biking constantly for 6 hours straight. That'll hopefully give me the base to keep going at it for at least 12-18 hours. As for the last 6 hours... did I mention that I'm crazy?
And... how is my body holding up?
Quite well, actually. I got reminded about my injuries this week. Luckily, it's not my ankle that bothered me first. My left platellar ligament has been hurting a little during the day and also when biking. For those of you not medically inclined, that's basically my left knee. I think it's an over use injury from biking. That means that I'm taking it easy when biking to and from work and things got better by the end of the week.
My gimpy ankle hurt for the first mile of Friday's run and then again during the uphill parts of the trail run. Luckily, once I got to flatter ground and just ran through the pain, it all went away. That tells me that I'm ramping things up at a good pace. A little pain is okay, as long as it goes away relatively quickly and doesn't stick around after the run.
That brings me to the last point to cover this week: Trail Runs.
(1) Trail runs are hard. So you think you're all tough if you can run on flat ground for 4 to 10 times longer. Well, sorry son, you're wrong. Going uphill at any appreciable grade will sap your energy and your muscles... FAST. Happily, at least the first mile of my trail run was all uphill... ALL uphill. It was only 8 minutes, but it was painful. I'll need to do a lot more trail runs to get ready for WTM. Otherwise, I'm going to get zapped instantaneously.
(2) When running downhill, run on your toes and don't get too excited. If you run on your heels, you're putting all the impact of your weight, plus your momentum, into your knees. That'll get really problematic really fast. You can soften the blow by pointing your toes and allowing the ball of your foot to hit first. That way, the lever of your ankle will take some of the impact away from your knees. Now, even though it's fun to blaze down the hill, you also need to be careful. Trails turn fast and hard. You don't want to build up too much momentum or... whooops, there you go off a cliff. You can't train or race hard if you're recovering from that. So, how do you stop the momentum? Run in a sine wave (non-mathematicians call it a zig-zag). Generally this means that you're running more distance, but it also means that you're artificially decreasing the gradient of the hill. That means you build up less momentum and also get less impact on your knees (yay).
(3) Running fast uphill looks like you're a beast, but in the long run, it's not worth it. WTM is running a loop. That means that when there's an uphill, there's also a downhill. If you take your time on the uphill, you're saving energy to go faster easier on the downhill or the flat. Also, when you're looking to run for 24 hours, running up hill like a fiend is a great way to waste 30 minutes of energy in like 30 seconds. So, as much as I'm going to push it going up hills, I'm going to practice taking it a tad easier than I'd like on that part, so I don't get ahead of myself on WTM-day.
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