45 Min CompuTrainer, 10 Mi Painful Run

I hit the CompuTrainer hard. The plan was an hour but I only made it through 45 minutes. Holding above-race wattages for extended periods of time hurts. I did 15 min @ 220 watts and 10 min @ 220 watts. I then had some 195+ work which I only made it through about half of. My legs were sore going in and fried coming out.

On the run I worked on maintaining quality through lots of pain. Not because that was the plan. Because the wheels fell off the bus at 5 miles.

This run had it all. The super-steep hills around the house. The 1.5 mi steady uphill outside the neighborhood. Some Silver Comet steady downhill for cadence work. Some trail running.

I'm trying to focus on quality. I managed 8:02/mi for the first five which was almost all uphill or very uphill. Then the legs locked up. I took a few minutes to stretch and eat a gel. Didn't help much. I was tempted to slow it way down and just jog it home. But even that hurt. If I'm gonna hurt, I decided, I should get some quality in.

Holding quality splits when you're really hurting is incredibly difficult. But it's good prep for a race. By the end of the run I was essentially limping through the steep hills in the neighborhood.

A surprise: I dehydrated the heck out of myself. I dropped six pounds on the run. Didn't expect that. I was sweating, but it's cooler out and I took two big stops on the Comet to drink a lot of water. That certainly played into the lack of muscular endurance near the end.

Overall, 10 mi at 8:25/mi pace at an average heart rate of 150bpm on varied terrain. I'm happy with it. Not because of the numbers. Because I ran through the pain. This was about as much as I could take today.