Morning. Picked up the pace a little on my commute this morning, and did strides at the end for the second day in a row (pickups, but I call them strides just like I call fartleks intervals, because it's the same thing to me). 

How do you differentiate? For me, strides are repeats of an indeterminate fast pace for about 100m, with about 200m easy jog recoveries. Always at the end of a run. I don’t do anything I call pickups or fartleks. Intervals are longer with a more carefully measured distance & more defined pace. And of course repeat longer than recovery. And with a cooldown after. I assumed this was all pretty normal.

MTA: I guess you answered. My strides are your pickups. I just decide how many strides I am going to do, assume 5 strides/mile, and back off that much before the end of the run before starting them. And the way I measure is 70 steps = 100m (counting to 35 of one foot) then recovery till the next 0.2 mile interval on my watch. So in fact by definition it’s 5 strides/mile.

Slept in this morning, all I need is 5 miles today to bring me to 130 for January.

Question: If my last big month was October (151.5 miles) and then November saw 93.3 miles and December 87.1 miles, am I making too big of a jump? 

 

No. It’s not like you’ve never run 130 in a month before.

 

I never order from RRS but it seems surprising anything would take a month, unless they were out of stock.

The initial order was over a month ago -- the 1080. They're not like RW, they ship ground, so it takes a week to make its way across the country to me. Then I sent those back, so there went another week, and I had to wait a few days for the Rebel to ship out, which took another week to get to me. And now it will be a week to get the wrong color back to them, plus another for the right one to get to me. Unless they just sent me the wrong one since the right one was out of stock and they thought I wouldn't notice, or something...

I really don't like RRS.

 

The initial order was over a month ago -- the 1080. They're not like RW, they ship ground, so it takes a week to make its way across the country to me. Then I sent those back, so there went another week, and I had to wait a few days for the Rebel to ship out, which took another week to get to me. And now it will be a week to get the wrong color back to them, plus another for the right one to get to me. Unless they just sent me the wrong one since the right one was out of stock and they thought I wouldn't notice, or something...

 

I really don't like RRS.

Maybe they've put you on their black list due to all the returns

 

No. It’s not like you’ve never run 130 in a month before.

This is true, I could be just paranoid....

 

When you were having issues in the Fall, how did your mileage increase before that? You just don't want to have a repeat of something similar.

My issues started like 2 weeks before the 2019 IMM, or something did, now I can't remember. I I had trained in the wrong shoes, Neutral shoes instead of stability and then ran the marathon in those shoes. Things had finally eased up 2 weeks ago, then my dumb ass went vertical on some trails, over 1,000 feet in elevation gain twice - a 5 miler that was around 1,000 and a 7 miler that was around 1,200. Since then, my calves were so tight and hating me.

Monday I had my massage focused on trigger point, Tuesday's 5 miler still had some issues but mainly a stiff left shin and my right achilles feeling tight. I've been massaging like crazy and doing my yoga stretches and stuff. Yesterday I ran 6.3 miles, the first mile sucked awful, shins were tight and lower right calf as well. But I found a place to do some good stretching and everything eased up.

I'm hoping I just need some serious constant TLC, but I've noticed that for the past 3 years these stiff issues have been happening when the weather is constantly going back and forth from cold to warm to cold and wet... Probably just a coincidence though.

 

How do you differentiate? For me, strides are repeats of an indeterminate fast pace for about 100m, with about 200m easy jog recoveries. Always at the end of a run. I don’t do anything I call pickups or fartleks. Intervals are longer with a more carefully measured distance & more defined pace. And of course repeat longer than recovery. And with a cooldown after. I assumed this was all pretty normal.

 

MTA: I guess you answered. My strides are your pickups. I just decide how many strides I am going to do, assume 5 strides/mile, and back off that much before the end of the run before starting them. And the way I measure is 70 steps = 100m (counting to 35 of one foot) then recovery till the next 0.2 mile interval on my watch. So in fact by definition it’s 5 strides/mile.

In-line strides maybe? I got the word "pickups" from SD a while back (I think it was her... it was from this forum anyways) because my strides do not always follow the exact definition, but yeah, it's essentially the same thing, so I should just call them strides like I did in my first post today, but without the explanation in parenthesis that adds confusion for nothing 

 

Well I don’t have to tell you this, but your job 24/7 from now till April 20th is to stay healthy. You’ll want to be in shape to run a marathon, but you don’t need to be in shape to PR. Because it’s not so likely to happen there anyway, unless your PR is particularly soft.

Stop stamping all over my delusional dreams.

 

We have had a very mild winter here with temps in the 30's for most of the month.  Day #10 of no sun though.  But we are supposed to hit 50 on Sunday 

Us too! I broke the Midwest!!!