Notes
Drove to Peasley to run on the weed-covered, hard dirt track and do some mile repeats today. Temp was about 75 with a humidity close to 100% (dewpoint was 73), so it was sticky out. There was a slight breeze out of the southwest, but the breeze felt pretty warm and only felt good in shade. Did a 10 minute warm-up, some dynamic drills and strides, and then got into it. The track is actually almost exactly 400 meters according to my GPS, which is awesome. I would run a mile, and then jog once around the track (400 meters) for recovery. Then, I would switch directions and run the mile again. My goal was 5-7 x 1 mile starting at 6:00 and see where things went from there. I was only able to squeak out 5 repeats, the first four hovering right around that 6:00 pace, and the last one faster. Legs felt alright, but pretty tired. Breathing was good overall, and it was just my legs holding me back. Not surprised, because these long trail runs and daily strength exercises are grinding them down. I'm not worried about constant fatigue in my legs, because that's exactly what I'm looking for right now, and once I start tapering they'll be hopefully strong enough to handle 28 trail miles. Half the track was in full sunlight, and the other half in shade. By the last 2 reps I was struggling to recover in 400 meters and I felt like I swimming in water. One thing that heat/humidity and altitude have in common is a point of no return. At altitude, there's a point of tiredness or pain that takes your body a long time to recovery from because you're oxygen depleted. In heat/humidity, I've been learning that once your body overheats, you're toast. Running in conditions like this is trying to find that line between overheating and not-overheating and trying to stay there as long as possible. If you cross over, like I was starting to during my 4th rep, you can't just jog an extra minute, you need to basically stop, drink water, and take a 10-20 minute break before trying again. I maybe could've done another rep at pace, but there was no point. One positive is that last week, in similar weather, I did an 8 mile steady-state run where I hung out in the 6:10-6:20 range for most of it, and today with less miles and more recovery, I was running faster paces, which honestly is exactly how it's supposed to be.
1- 6:10
2- 6:09
3- 5:59
4- 5:58
5- 5:47