2016 Training Week 8 (20/06/2016 to 26/06/2016)

June 26, 2016

Summary of this week’s activities

First, let’s review my activities during this week. I had 6 run and 2 swim activities in this week. On Monday (20/06) I had a 13K run (tempo 6K) with the following averages: (13.00 K, 5:07 min/km, 153 bpm, 29m elevation gain). On Tuesday (21/06) I had a 15K easy run with the following averages: (15.40 K, 5:13 min/km, 153 bpm, 36m elevation gain) and a 1K swim with average pace 2:09 min/100m. On Wednesday (22/06) I had a 15K easy run with the following averages: (15.13 K, 5:15 min/km, 151 bpm, 36m elevation gain) and a 500m swim with average pace 2:19 min/100m. On Thursday (23/06) I had a speed run 6×800 with the following averages: (15.20 K, 5:31 min/km, 148 bpm, 41m elevation gain). On Friday (24/06) I had a 12K easy run with the following averages: (12.14 K, 5:37 min/km, 142 bpm, 37m elevation gain). On Sunday (26/06) I had a 20K long run with the following averages: (20.01 K, 5:10 min/km, 156 bpm, 62m elevation gain).

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday	Total
Tempo 6K	Easy 15K 1K Swim	Easy 15K 500m Swim	Speed 6×800-400 recovery	Easy 12K	25	Long 20K	90.8 km Run1.5 km Swim

VO2Max and weekly mileage

My VO2Max this week in my (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Sunday) activities were (50, 50, 51, 51, 51, 51) ml/kg/min respectively. Also my weekly total this week was 90.8 km run and 1.5 km swim.

About individual runs

On Monday (20/06): Finally I shifted my training time to early morning. I decided to have a tempo run today and like always with 3.5K warm up and cool down each. I didn’t have a good idea about my pace for the tempo run at this level of my training so I just started to run and the only thing that I did was increasing my cadence. After 2K I looked at my watch and I noticed that ave. pace is 4:33 min/km so I decided to have the entire 10K tempo run around that pace. I successfully completed a 6K tempo run with that pace and after that I decided to finish the tempo run cause I was tired. This workout gave me a better idea about the appropriate pace I should train with right now. When I look at my Lap Ave. Cadence I can see that it’s (187,190,188) spm which is much higher than 180 spm.Unfortunately I forgot to add Ave. Lap Cadence to data screen of my watch and therefore I couldn’t keep it around 180 spm , hopefully next time. The final issue is my swim after the run. It’s almost impossible to train properly for the SOS workouts when you have a backpack with yourself and therefore I couldn’t have my swim after this run, I have to find a solution for this problem.

Tuesday run activity (21/06): 2Kg backpack through the entire run. The major improvement in this workout was improving my ave. running cadence to 178 spm which is pretty good. Also my heart is performing much better, Ave HR 153 bpm for ave. pace 5:13 min/km plus carrying a backpack.

Tuesday swim activity (21/06): Transition time: 17 min. 5 min pool stretching exercise , 10 min Hot tub, 5 min Sauna. When I swim after my training, my happiness is in a totally different level compared to the time that I can’t swim after my run.

Wednesday swim activity (22/06): Transition time: 23 min. Today for the first, I changed my swim breathing to every cycle instead of every other cycle and I significantly slow down my pace. The idea is I wanted to go for a speed run today but I wasn’t 100% sure this is the right time for this SOS workout after the tempo run the other day and I didn’t feel that it’s the right time neither. I was thinking if I slow down my swim, then it would be easier for my heart to do the speed workout tomorrow. 5min pool stretching exercise, 10 min Hot tub, 5 min Sauna.

On Thursday (23/06): In the first two speed intervals plus in the second Km of the cool down run, my heart was not comfortable with the run and it was hurting a bit (not sure if it was my heart, it was right under left side of my chess and the area around it). I see two possible reasons for that, one is because it was the first speed run of the season and my heart was not adapted to the situation and the evidence for that is because I didn’t have that problem in the next four intervals. The other reason is becuase of the intensity of my trainings. Past 7 days I was training 87 km run plus 4km swim where two of the runs were Tempo/Speed and three of the swims were relatively fast, as a result my body needed to sleep a lot last night for the recovery of my trainings. I have already made an adjustment in my training yesterday by slowing down my swimming pace and the immediate second adjustment is to temporarily stop swimming and also slow down the easy runs in a way that my weekly ave. pace and weekly ave. HR would decrease a bit. I would still go to pool everyday right after my run just for pool stretching and also using the Hot tub and Sauna which would be very useful for releasing the stress from my muscles and also making me very fresh for the rest of the day, but I wont swim to see how things would happen in future. As soon as things were settled down, I might gradually resume swimming too. Today: 10 min Hot tub, 5 min Sauna. I also want to mention that I planned to complete the speed run with the ave. pace 4:00 min/km that I succeefully did it. (Check out the update in the comment of next activity)

On Friday (24/06): 2Kg backpack through the entire run. 10 min Hot tub 5 min Sauna. Now I can say that possibly the pain in the left side of my chess is just a muscle pain and it’s not about my heart cause I had the same pain sometimes during the day in the right side of my chess. I also double checked my heart rate during my speed run in my recent workout compared to the last time I had speed run with the same speed and I actually found that my heart works better this time compared to the last time. This time my Max/Ave heart rate during the intervals was (179,178,181,181,184,186) bpm and (172,172,171,172,176,176) bpm respectively and the last time I had a “4×1200-400 recovery” speed run on Oct. 7th 2015 here: https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/1151438278 my Max/Ave heart rate was (187,188,187,189) bpm and (181,181,179,181)bpm respectively, to be fair and complete in the comparisson my Ave. pace in the intervals this time vs last time is (4:01,4:04,4:02,4:03,3:51,4:00) min/km vs (3:54,3:52,3:55,3:55) min/km. Anyways I made an adjustment in my training plan and that looks to me pretty positive and I guess it was necessary.

On Sunday (26/06): 25 min Hot tub, 10 min Sauna (Later in the afternoon)