Last week, we had a Fartlek-ish style workout that I have come to call a "new style" workout. I don't imagine I'm the first person to come up with it but it's something that we had never done before until last year so it has been deemed new to us. This workout had to be completed in the evening last Wednesday because we couldn't pry ourselves out of bed that particular morning. It might have been raining that morning, which is typically a good enough excuse for us to just keep on snoozing. The workout consists of a 6 minute press with 1 minute recovery, followed by 5 minutes press, and 2 minutes recovery working all the way down to where we end up doing 1 hard minute. It's fairly easy to remember because you always add the press and the recovery and they equal 7 minutes. Much to our surprise, we came through the 3 mile mark under 6 minute average even with our recovery pace mixed in. All in all, we covered 12 miles that evening.
I was a little concerned with just how we would handle our workout Saturday since we were unable to keep all of our longer runs in the mornings during the week. Saturday's workout was scheduled to be a 10 mile tempo with an optional 2 mile recovery and then 1 more mile sub 5:45. The 10 mile tempo also was to include 4 miles at marathon pace and then 1 mile at half marathon pace, then 4 miles at marathon pace again, followed by 1 mile at half marathon pace. Our marathon goal pace is 5:58 and our half pace is about 5:50 miles. The morning started with us taking our tables out to the trail in order for us to have water to grab during the tempo. This also allows us to practice taking our Nutrilite Endurance Cubes while running a long fast effort (basically simulating how it will feel on race day).
We started the workout right on our marathon goal pace and it was feeling surprisingly easy. For our fifth mile, we increased the pace to 5:50 just like planned. The hard part is settling back into marathon pace and not slowing too much. We were able to get things right back on track for the next 4 miles. There was one mile that the pace crept up over 6 min on but I think that was mostly due to it being the turn around mile and having to fight the wind all the way through Willard. (If you're not familiar, Willard always seems to be windy and often seems that way from both directions). All in all, we pretty much nailed this workout. We even managed to crush the optional 1 mile at the end.
--Skipping ahead a week now--
On Saturday, Kimi and I headed out to Frisco for our weekly long run. This one just happened to be our last really long one prior to our upcoming marathon. We set out to complete a 24 mile long run and that's precisely what we did. For our long runs over 13 miles, we will usually wear our water belts and take along our Nutrilite Endurance Cubes as well so we were definitely packing for this one. We established a plan to run out 9 and back 9, then drop one of our water belts, and go out 3 and back 3. Neither one of us enjoys wearing the belt so we typically alternate wearing the belt for the last bit. At a mere 5 miles into the run, we came to a place on the trail where the tree limbs were hanging low and made it narrow. Usually we will just go single file in order to get through these areas but for some particular reason, I decided last minute to just push the limb to the side. Who knew this would be a huge mistake. I received immediate pain in my left ring finger (specifically my proximal interphalangeal joint). I could see a small puncture wound but nothing stuck in it. It immediately became difficult to bend the finger but there wasn't really any swelling just yet. I worked it out and continued the remaining 19 miles of the run just fine. Actually, it was quite stellar really.
The next day, we woke up and ran 9 miles and immediately following, my finger swelled up a bunch and I could feel my ring just holding fluid in the finger. The pressure was building. Finally, I decided to find someone that could cut the ring off thinking that with the release in pressure, the swelling would be able to go down and all would start to normalize. 2 days later and I'm still having a lot of stiffness, swelling, and pain in that finger. It is improving but not as quickly as I'd hoped. Of all the injuries I would have considered during a long run, having something like this to a finger, wouldn't have ever crossed my mind.
All in all, last week was a great week, we completed 90 miles (the most I've run since college, and the most Kimi has ever run in a week), one track workout, and crushed our final long run. Now if my finger could just get better, I wouldn't be so concerned with running over the next few weeks.
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