Training Log: August 20-26,2023

This was an interesting training week. I travelled through Europe much of the week. Some days were spent mostly in a plane, train, or car. I anticipated that I couldn’t do many double runs, so did a couple of longer morning runs. I also didn’t know much about the terrain or the cities in advance. So, I did a lot of exploring and was fortunate enough to see many different parts of the cities.

I visited Warsaw, Kraków, and Zielona Góra in Poland. I finished the trip in Lyon, France. The trip was a blast and each city was lovely. I really enjoyed the architecture, parks, and food.

We also visited the Wieliczka salt mine, which was fascinating. The mine has many chapels, chandeliers, and statues, all of which are carved out of salt! It also has several underwater salt lakes. Here are some pictures.

Kraków and Warsaw had great paths along the river, which offered a fun way to explore the city. Lyon was very runnable, too. Parc de la tête d’or was beautiful and had many interesting running trails. There were many good plant-based and vegan food options.

I ran a 100km week mostly in Zone 2. I kept my heart rate at roughly 125-130 BPM during the runs. I did a couple of double runs, which felt good. I also introduced a couple of threshold sessions to finish off longer runs. Some of the runs — especially in Zielona Góra (which means green hill) were more hilly and felt more challenging.

For this week’s threshold training, I would run for roughly 3 minutes at the heart rate zone just below my max, followed by walking for several minutes to recover. This is a bit short for threshold. But I’ve mostly ran in Zone 2 for the past months while I built volume, and didn’t want to injure myself or overtrain. I try to avoid increasing mileage and speed in the same week to prevent injury.

I averaged a good amount of sleep — roughly 7.5 hours per night — and enjoyed my day off. I try and do a lot of active recovery, meaning very low intensity aerobic stuff (walking or biking at a low heart rate) after hard workouts or following heavy volume weeks.

I continue to be surprised about the inaccuracy of pre-run feelings. Sometimes, I am pretty excited to run but end up having a tough time and it feels like an eternity. Other times, I dread the second run, but it ends up going smoothly. I also realize that it can take a couple of kilometers at a very slow pace to find a rhythm.

My goal for next week is to increase my mileage back to 120km/week, with daily double runs and two threshold sessions. I aim to do 90% of my mileage in Zone 2,and use the threshold sessions to improve pace.