Days of the Phoenix

6mi recovery today, 3mi of which was with Aileen.  We got her some Cascadias for our Half Dome hike (2 days from now) so I figured it'd be a good idea for her to break them in a bit and make sure they had no hot spots or anything.  Seems like all is good to go.  I felt surprisingly fresh and recovered given that yesterday beat me up a bit.  Go figure.

8mi today.  Seems like my heart was on vacation for a bit, because it took a longer-than-usual amount of time to get up to speed.  Half the run, actually.  Legs felt pretty good, body felt in sync for most the run, and I ran mile 7 as a slight progression to pass someone before turning off the trail.  Turned out it was a pretty fast woman and it actually took me a while to catch her.  

Aileen started feeling sick yesterday and hasn't improved much today.  But she still wants me to drag her to Yosemite.  Atta girl.

Good luck at Half Dome.  I tried it 3 years ago on the last weekend it was open in October.  It was iced over and the rangers were taking next of kin information, if you really wanted to try.

I climbed Half Dome 8 wks after my daughter was born - top that one .  Anyway it took us about 17 hrs round trip and we got back to base camp after dark completely exhausted and the food was closed!

Lovely stories, the both of you. You guys just like to come and rain on my blog, eh? Joking, of course. 

Michele - What the Hell went wrong that it took 17hr? 

Fortunately, Aileen and I summitted a mountain with similar stats to the Dome 3 weeks ago in less than 6hr round trip with no issues. Hope the same can be said about tomorrow.

How did the climb go, or technically is going?

What is a "dome"?

Mike MacLellan wrote:Lovely stories, the both of you. You guys just like to come and rain on my blog, eh? Joking, of course. 

Michele - What the Hell went wrong that it took 17hr? 

Fortunately, Aileen and I summitted a mountain with similar stats to the Dome 3 weeks ago in less than 6hr round trip with no issues. Hope the same can be said about tomorrow.

I meant 7 hrs - sorry - there is that typing too fast again.  We went at a pretty good clip until we were almost there and then we had a bunch of complainers in the group.  I, who hates heights, even did the last 200m on the chain partially freaked and made it.  I kept reminding the guys I was with (it was a sales group and they were supposed to train) that I had a baby 8 wks ago.

Michele - In that case, thanks, braggart, you beat us by an hour.

Alex - Half Dome.  It's half a dome, literally, of granite.  Large.  Very, very large.

Jim et. al -

We survived!  Despite getting a pretty early start, we still hit some traffic nearing the cables, and it actually took us 25min to get up the cables and 25min to get down them.  The hike was tougher than I remember (then again, I never went up it before, just came down from Cloud's Rest last time), with 2mi of continuous granite stairs early on.  Still, we made good time.  Aileen had a bit of a freakout going up the Sub-Dome, and a bit of a breakdown approaching the cables, but by taking one wooden plank at a time, pulled herself up to the top and earned a Coke.  In hindsight, she doesn't hate me for "encouraging" her to keep going.  "You WERE nice," she says.  

Including stops, just over 8hrs, with about 7:15 of that as moving time.  I had a massive headache all night last night from a pretty bad case of dehydration.  My calves are very, very sore, and I'm hoping to get a run in this evening to loosen them up a little...  But we'll see.

I've been to Yosemite a couple of times but never got the chance to do Half Dome. It looks like a heck of a hike/climb, but well worth the effort. Yes?

Good job encouraging Aileen to make it up. That cable section probably rattles a lot of people.

I'm with Aileen as that is where I had a bit of a breakdown as well - but I made it too!  We can compare stories someday.

Mark - Definitely worth it.  But definitely harder than I remembered.  Looking at the GPS, it's an average gradient of 13.4% from the start of the trail to the top of the cables (7ish miles).   

Michele - ...I admit, I was very nervous, too, when looking at the cables.  On them, not at all.  The rock's gotten slick, though.

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Long day yesterday.  Aileen and I had driven to San Jose on Thursday to see my grandparents as well as my uncle and aunt who live in Canada, which was a nice little reunion.  My mom was also up there, so we stayed in a hotel with her to avoid having 7 people in a small ranch-style house with 1 bathroom.  I ran an easy 4mi (holy tight calves) in the morning, had a big breakfast, and then Aileen and I were on our way to take in the beautiful California coast.  

We passed through Monterey, Carmel, Big Sur (stopped to hike to the little waterfall cove at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park), then pretty much straight-shotted the 1 until it became the 101 in SLO.  Oh, we did stop to see the Elephant Seals in San Simeon, too.  Grabbed In-n-Out for lunch (what CA roadtrip would be complete without it?) and a peanut butter smoothie from Blenders in the Grass in Santa Barbara (if you're ever in the area, you MUST GO).  11 hours after we left San Jose, we got back to Lakewood.  Phew.

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8mi this morning.  Legs are hugely better, with no noticeable fatigue.  Sparing the details, In-n-Out + a lot of peanut butter may have been a bad idea yesterday.  Had a pretty intense mile there.  All's well that ends well.

Oof.  Planned 15mi today that became 13.5mi when I realized just how deceptively tough the trails were and blew up on a long hill at mile 7.  The purpose of today was to just run long and steady, which happened, just at a much higher HR than the effort level warranted.  I finished severely dehydrated, as well.  Guess it's time to get a little water flask.  

55mi for the week including the hike.

The body is a weird thing.  5mi recovery today, same pace overall as yesterday ended up, but felt SO EASY.  I don't get it.

Little bit of excitement as I semi-jay-walked an intersection (the light had turned red, so it should have been safe for me to go, anyway) and 2 cars ran the red.  I only realized it in the middle of the 2nd lane.  One stopped to let me cross, the other blared their horn at me and sped by at 60mph.  Okay, dude.

8mi today.  I started to get a little bonky around mile 3 (ooooooh, glycogen reserves, where have you gone?), and as soon as that subsided, my legs decided to get mushy on me.  Looks like Half Dome is STILL in the legs a little bit.  It's a stepback week, though, so I should be back to normal by next Monday.  Hopefully.

We're headed to Palm Springs with Aileen's family this weekend (Fri-Mon).  Planning to do a 6mi MP run on one of the days and hike Mt. San Jacinto (11mi, ~2500' elevation change) on another.  One of those will be very unpleasantly warm.

6mi with a progression finish up the last hill.  About .75mi of medium effort just to kick out the crap in the legs.  Still not 100%, but getting there.  Last vVO2max workout tomorrow.

Where did those bonnie bygone days go of 2 miles in pain and torture that you had a few short months ago?  And look at you now.   

Two miles can still hurt.  But it's such a goooooooood pain, y'know?

7.45mi (because I wouldn't let my neuroses push an extra .05mi for no reason) with 6x 2min @ vVO2max w/ 2min recoveries.  The on intervals were a bit all over the map, pace-wise, as the first 3 were on varying degrees of uphill (.5-2%) and the last 3 were coming back down.  I had a bit left for the last one (as opposed to last time, when just getting 5 in was gutting it out) so I hammered it for a 5:2x pace.  HR was surprisingly low for all of this, with most intervals ~170bpm.  Probably just a week's worth of fatigue keeping it down.  

Rest day tomorrow.

Hey that was a nice 6 x 2/2 workout. I was looking at it on Strava and you did a much better job of the pacing on the reps than the last time. Even though the last couple were downhill, that really doesn't matter. Bottom line is that you cranked out the workout and some very impressive paces and improved from the last time. Great job Mike!!

I have found that intervals with my Garmin 610 are always off, especially when I run in a wooded area. If I do mile repeats they are much more reasonable.

Schuey - Thanks bud.  I replied to your pacing comment on Strava.  

Jim - When I was trying 30sec or 1min intervals, the timing was all over the place, and I didn't actually see any accurate results until after the run.  With 2min, there's time to smooth out the first little glitches of the watch.  

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Rest day today.  Glad it's here.  I'm tired.

So, about that 9mi w/ 6 @ MP...  Yeah...

The culprit, in a word: alcohol.  More specifically, lots of strawberry lemonade cocktails.  "Slept" right through my non-existent 5am alarm, finally dragging myself out of bed at 8:30.  Already in the mid-80s by the time I hit the street, so that run got reduced to a 5mi w/ 2 @ MP.  Glad I cut it short, too, since my legs were just not coordinated enough for any real uptempo work, and even still, my ankle and knee are complaining at how sloppily I ran.  

Oof.  11mi hike tomorrow.

Nothing like an unscheduled, self-inflicted rest day.

No, Mark, unscheduled was today.  Yesterday was just a half-assed day.  

Despite being plenty good about drinking water and nothing else yesterday, this desert heat's still having its way with me.  Both Aileen and I feel pretty bleh, so we barely made it to the car before the sun turned us around.  Even though it's mid-50s on the mountain...  Just can't find the motivation.  Doesn't help that sleeping has been pretty miserable (AC sucks on our wing of the house).  

Gotta keep things in perspective and remember that training consists of several months, not 1 weekend.  Also, some things are more important than training: Aileen getting to play Risk all day with her family, for example.

Back in a less apparent desert.  Aileen and I got home yesterday afternoon, which meant an evening run for me.  6mi recovery just before sunset.  There was a nice breeze kicking along to help lessen the waning heat.

With how tough it was to squeeze in training this weekend, I'm starting to think about how I can maximize my time now before the move back east.  I've got a week and a half, then a week of travel time that's already scheduled to be a stepback week.  I'm thinking I may do a 10-day "crash week" in which volume is substantially increased (~25%, or 12mpw) for a sort of quick jolt to the system.  Since the 2nd part of a crash week requires an equally substantial recovery (1/2 day for every 1 day of harder work), I would be able to relax a bit more on the drive across the country.  While research shows that peaking intensity is better than peaking volume, I'm not quite at the point where an intensity peak would be even possible, so at the very least, I could mitigate some of the losses I may experience while moving.