The Fatigue I Like

Fatigue showed up during yesterday morning's swim. Turns out, Monday's 46x100's bands only took a toll on my triceps and lats. Which meant the Wednesday swim wasn't so pretty. W/u was way slower than it felt- 16:40 felt like 16 flat. Main set we did some fast 50's... "fast" is relative, as always. 1800M main set as: 3 rounds of 8x50's all fast @:50 followed by a 200 easy. What I found interesting is that usually the reason I hate 50's is because my HR goes so high and I end up panting breathing, but yesterday my fatigue level was so high that I couldn't go hard enough to get my HR up or breathe hard. Interestingly though, I didn't really slow down through the set- always sort of stayed pretty close to Mark's feet and while I didn't micro-manage every split, for the most part I was 40-42" which isn't my fastest but isn't as bad as I expected. And I never felt miserable. Finished with another 1K pull so slow and tired though yikes like 16:06. Enough of that.

I added it up in my head and turns out I'd put in ~23 hours of training in the 7 days since entering Vineman (Thurs>Wed), so, no wonder I was tired! Doh! I didn't try to train anymore after that swim yesterday. Just stayed home and worked instead.

To be honest, I rather like this state of fatigue I am in. I like it better than being unfit anyway when I can't even go out and jog easy while keeping my HR low. I feel like when my HR is low and controlled that I have the freedom to do just about any training session I want... vs when HR is not controlled, hard sessions tend to really hurt me. I coach athletes who have heart rates that vary across the board- some always just naturally quite low (these athletes tend to excel at Ironman!), some who can have it under control with 10-15 hours/week of consistent training, and a few who never really seem to get it under control. In *most* cases I think in that last case, they just don't train enough to do so (not all cases though! Sometimes there are underlying factors with life stress or whatever...). For me I think it takes ~20 hours/week of consistent (mostly aerobic) training to get to the place I am now. And while I don't have much pep in this state, I do end up feeling like a machine and that's a preferable place to be I think. At least if your goals involve long distance racing.

I finally got a new HR monitor that works so I used that this morning on my run. Not surprisingly HR was 5-8 beats lower than 'normal' through most of that run. I finally felt like I'd earned the right to do some interval type work so I jogged a couple miles over to a good hill and did a standard set of 8x1min hard up with 90" walk/jog recovery on the way down. HR maxed out at 161 which is def lower than I would have expected given the effort, but I felt good enough on those so no issue. Several hours later I went out and ran 5 more miles, progression run this time. 2.5 miles down at ~9:15 pace then 2.5 miles back up at ~8:45 pace. The effort was both easier and harder than those splits would indicate because of the nature of the route. HR was low 140's all the way out and upper 150's coming back, until the last steep hill where I pushed and got it up to 168.

Anyway, that double run day with hill reps in the morning followed by progression run in the afternoon was one my old coach used to give me often in 2013. I rather like it because I think the hard morning effort actually helps me feel better later in the day when I run again. And, I got 11 miles in for the day with a bit of quality so I'll take that!

Found another random flower growing in my yard today. This one is out near the mailbox. Nature is amazing.