Daily Note

Was considering making it a two-a-day, but decided sleep and recovery would be more important then four additional miles this morning. Want to make sure I'm feeling healthy as soon as possible, so that my legs can feel less achy and breathing can be back to normal. Again, this isn't a full on cold, but something that's still an annoyance and hindering me from ideal running. Besides, looking at my mileage for the week, I'm gonna be perfectly fine by not doing this second effort. Left from Skog @3:55pm to begin the day's workout warm-up. Went around by the quack shack for this thing and set ourselves up at the bottom of Kitt Hill by heading west on Hwy 19. My legs had felt like crap all day, but thankfully were relatively fresh when starting up this run...had me more excited for the work to come! Ended up being 3 miles in 22:19. We had real solid group of guys out there for the workout today w/ Justin, Crispy, Plumb, Birdo, and Primo. Throwback to cross season, which was nice. This was only the second time doing hill repeats in my nine year running career and the first time since August before my freshman year of high school. It was good to get in this different form of stimulus. Made thins pretty fun, but also quite difficult. Legs and cardio were feeling it by the final rep, especially on the last little uphill before you finish out the bout (this seemed to be the consensus WOAT spot on the hill). Pretty happy with how I paced things as I started slightly slower to be conservative and with the recent sickness in mind, but was able to maintain and actually get a bit faster: 67.9, 68.7, 66.7, 66.3, 65.7, 65.7. My best guess looking at my Garmin is that this thing was ~.21 miles long. Recovery jog back down to the bottom averaged two minutes. Overall workout was 2.5 miles in 18:32. Legs had some lactic acid, but this was pretty comparable to what I felt near the end of the two minute bouts I did during December. Cardio was also stressed a good amount on each rep, but it didn't seem to increase much with each rep (unlike the legs, which obviously got tougher as things progressed). Remembered about halfway through the second rep that I needed to focus more on shortening my stride. I often have the problem of opening things up and increasing my stride too much when the work gets tough. This quicker stride is nice in the fact that it simulates speed work. Don't know how the rest of my form was, but should also work to drive the arms more next week. After all, when the legs get tired, that's where your focus should go! One final thing I want to improve on next week is keeping the pace constant during each rep. Looking at the Strava breakdown, consistently slowed down from the first to second half...from 4:20-4:35 grade adjusted pace to 5:05 by the end. Regardless, this was a great way to introduce new stimulus to my training and was a real solid body of work. I can also appreciate getting back outside for WOs. Perhaps the first time since early January? CD was reverse warm-up, plus out to the tree line on Hospital Road and back. Decided that wasn't quite enough, so Crispy and I threw on another mile around the baseball parking lot. Lots of conversation during these 5.5 miles in 40:19 helped make for an enjoyable experience, even if the legs started to feel progressively worse. (Right after the workout they were surprisingly rejuvenated, but got quite tired post-2 mile mark). Afterwards, did calf raises, toe tappers, rolling, and upper body lifting. Chest press, pullover, lat pulldown, torso rotation, shoulder dumbbells, tri pulldown, dumbbell curls, ab coaster, flies, delts, tricep press, row. Chest press lackluster, but everything else was good. Later day had me back to the locker room at 6:30. This was followed by a good dinner 'til 8:30 w/ Trips, Liam, and Crispy. PF7s @ 91.1 miles.