26: January is now in the Books

Mt Baldy from the 2nd small peak on the approach

It’s weird, but it is running season in Montana, or it might as well be.  Snow has just not been much of a thing yet this winter.   We had a weeklong blast of bitter cold, but now it is just downright nice out.  Blue skies, temps in the 30s or higher, so I’ve been getting out and putting down miles.

I hit 120 miles and 21,000 vertical feet of climbing to finish off January, though I bailed on my attempt on Mt Baldy on Saturday; I managed 3,000 feet of climbing in the first 4 miles, but there was a lot of snow--for running--up high, and it was grey, cold and windy.  With this month in the books, I thought I’d provide an update on how my training is progressing. 

My sense is that I’m still in what I will call Stage 1 of training, getting my body accustomed to the rigors of regular running once again.  I ran for 4 days in each of the past two weeks; Two weeks ago I managed 28 miles, and I ran 34 last week. I'm on pace for 30 or more miles again this week.  Most of the miles are in Zones 1 and 2.  On roads I am zipping along at the spritely pace of 13-15 minutes per mile, on trails, my miles come in above 20 minutes.  I know, that’s slow, but remember a few things: I am 66, the roads here are hilly, the mountains are steep, and there is snow in the mountains so I am running in spikes.  To me, I find it satisfying that I am able to stay in Zones 1 and 2 even while I am on trails that in some stretches climb more than 1,000 feet per mile. 

Getting the body accustomed to the rigors of running is crucial to staying injury free.  It is more important for me to be consistently out there slogging at this point in my training cycle than for me to be trying to build in a lot of speed.

That said, I have done two runs thus far that has included speedwork.  An 8.3-mile Zone 1, 2 road run with Zone 3 bursts up hills for the last half of the run.  My first progression run of the new year: 9.3 miles in total, in Zones 1 and 2 for the first 5.5, and Zones 3 and 4 thereafter, though I struggled to stay in Zone 4.

In addition to running, I have been swimming once a week, and weightlifting and doing PT sessions twice each week; it's been hitting 50 this week so I traded my swim for a bike ride. We got a bit of snow about 2 weeks ago and I skied 2 days. 

As my fitness improves, I am seeing small but steady improvements in the health stats on my Garmin.  The biggest one I notice is in the overnight stress reports.  I spend a lot more of my hours of sleep in the resting phase instead of a state of low or even medium stress.  I feel like my body is healing more quickly after workouts, and for the most part I am ready to go again the next day.  My body battery responds to my better sleep by peaking in the 50-80 range in the mornings, and my resting heartrate is now in the low 60s.

One thing I’ve noticed is after days with moderate workouts I sleep very well, and, this morning for example, my body battery hit 89.  I felt great!  My watch is always suggesting that I do more short distance, moderate workouts, and take more rest days, than I do.  I think my health stats would show stronger improvements, if I followed the plan my Garmin lays out for me each day, and I might have more high energy days.  But my Garmin doesn’t know what I’m training for.  Come June, when I set out on the Old Gabe 30K, if I took my Garmin’s advice, I don’t expect I’d be ready to race.  That is a new innovation I would like to see Garmin offer, building your racing plan into its training recommendations. Even without this innovation, it does make me curious; how well would I perform if I followed a plan focused on making me sleep well and feel good instead of targeted toward specific race distances.  Maybe that will be how I start my training next year.

Overall, I feel like I am off to a good start.  I am building consistency and building up miles.  I feel good, and damned if I am not ready for a break from running to get in some skiing before this winter is history.  There is some snow in the forecast for this weekend and the middle of next week.  Fingers are crossed.