Wednesday, November 17, 2010

"Feeling great, feeling good, how are you" -Outkast

My posts have been a little behind this week and as I was trying to think how to write a post summing up what been going on. As I thought about it I could not find a way. Typically, I write my post before I read others blogs for the day, but with my blogger's block today I switched it up.

As I read Patrick's (@ responsibility199) post for the day I found the inspiration to explain how I am feeling at what's been going on.  In his post he wrote about why he is feeling great and asked others if they were and if not, why?

As the day went on I realized this was a good way to intro what has been going on lately.

How do I feel?

(I debated how to start because I don't want Andrew to think I am being negative if I start with the bad stuff, but I decided I would start with the bad and work towards the climax hehe I said climax)

Physically: I am not feeling great- My stomach has felt odd for a few days, my left quad is killing me, my right knee and shin are almost as bad, my back is slightly sore, and I am having sporadic pain in my left heel if I hit it wrong.

Mentally: I am feeling great. I almost as good as I have ever felt. I have a few areas in my life that are causing mental distress but they are staying behind the scenes because I feel so good about me!!!

You might ask how I feel so good mentally, If I am not feeling good physically? I feel great because I know the feeling of being battered and bruised is from working DAMN hard.

I missed half a day of work Monday do to my stomach, I know what caused it and it's not something I can change right now. I am doing everything I know to do to change it right now and once I think of more to do I will try. I clearly am avoiding talking about it here, but if you care to know send me and email and I will unload on you, maybe you can even help me think of something I haven't thought of yet.

After I got home from work I ate dinner with CB and headed to the gym. The running plan called for strength and stretching. My strength training plan called for a move from the endurance portion to the strength building portion of my training. This involved moving half my exercises from low weight higher reps to low reps higher weight. For the most part it went well. I am sure I will acclimate and be better the next time.

This is the reason my back is a little sore. Not a bad reason. I am considering going light next week considering my race so that I do not have this soreness on race day.

Tuesday night I headed out of the house for a 5 mile easy paced run, given the weekend having 6 more miles than planned, I decided to take the first mile slow and build into my pace from there. I never was able to get the pace up. I eventually turned off the garmin and said just run and get it done. After the first mile My quad knee and shin were hurting. I decided I would just do a three mile recovery and switch my 5 miler to Thursday. Honestly, the 5 miler would probably have been over doing it with weekend and the weight considered. I ended up walking the middle half mile of this. I figured it was better to walk it and get the active recovery than to quit altogether. It was tough, but i am happy with it despite the pain.

This morning I had my speedwork planned. I woke up with sore legs and procrastinated 45 minutes. I finally got up and said  JUST DO IT!! I ran 10x400. This is my last speedwork between now and next Thursday. I mixed up my course a little for some variety. I started out slow. The plan calls for 5k pace. I started off a littel slower because I remembered last time i started out with 200m pace and couldn't finish the workout.

I got the entire workout done. All of my intervals were in my pace zone, but I realized that the pace zone is slower than I want it to be given the Yasso formula. Since I want a sub 2 hour 13.1 I need  2 minute 400's. My longest one was 2:05 and half were over 2:00. Of the half that were under, several were substantially under and i was running over terrain, not on a track. I thought about it and decided that I will go out next week and have fun. I have trained hard. If I hit my time goal good. if not, I will have completed a race I have never done before. This workout and all of the corresponding thinking left me feeling very happy.

Now does it make sense how I beaten but am still feeling great?

My head is bloody but unbowed!

Are you feeling great? If so why? If not, why not?

SOMETHING ELSE COOL:
http://www.codyelder.com/blog/2010/11/garmin-and-road-id-the-perfect-combination/

4 comments:

Joel said...

Luke - good call on getting out and doing the intervals. I personally hate intervals, even though I know I need to do them.

So I finally get the CHHS comment you made on my blog...as I stalked your old posts. When did you graduate CHHS? It's uncanny - when I was there, I also ran XC and was a pole vaulter! And, like you, I never jumped very high!

Molly said...

It makes complete sense to me!!

Caratunk Girl said...

I get the beaten but feel great thing! As strange as it sounds, that means you are making improvements and getting stronger!! Yeah!

Patrick said...

I've heard that at times our workouts don't seem to be giving us what we want physically but they make us mentally stonger. If you've completed your work though a less than ideal physical state and stand here head held high, then you most certainly are stronger than you were before you decided to just do it.

Have a Great weekend!