Long Run: Noped out at 15 miles

This week was supposed to be 19. Last week, also 19, I also noped out at 15.

It's possible that I'm hitting some sort of over-training plateau. (Both of us-- cinnabarine is having similar experiences). Or it's just that I currently suck at hills. cinnabarine noted that there are two small hills on the route of the marathon we're training for, and maybe we should train specifically for those. But it's a little difficult to tell from the elevation profile map exactly what they look like. Taking the most conservative estimate-- i.e. training to face the worst interpretation we can put on the data-- we guessed them at 3% grade for a mile, and 10% grade for a quarter mile.

3% grade for a mile isn't too bad. 10% grade for a quarter mile... is.

So anyway last week I tried to add that in to my regular long run. It was hard, but I did it. But it did a number on my legs. Aerobically, I was fine. Weirdly, at least for the first half-marathon distance or so, 5.3mph seems to now be (probably the upper edge of) a rest pace for me-- I could feel my body recovering, running at that pace on a level-ground setting on the treadmill after the hills. But it didn't recover enough, and by the time I started my last set it seemed to be getting worse. My legs hurt, a lot, in ways they don't usually from this running. So I stopped at 15 miles. And didn't feel particularly winded. But my legs took a couple days to feel okay.

This time I ran with cinnabarine and we didn't do the full second hill-- we only did 0.14 miles of it-- and my legs didn't hurt right away, but midway through the third set they started hurting, like the hill had taken something out of them they couldn't recover from.

So, we definitely need to do some serious hill training. But I'm thinking also... our existing plan was for an extremely unusual long training period for this second marathon. We actually have time to stop entirely and do an entirely new (abbreviated) training cycle before late November.

I think this might actually be a good idea. Give our legs a chance to recover for reals, then come at them with some serious hill work.

Straps

I had wanted to take the intro Straps class at Esh this session, but didn't click the button fast enough. But last night I was able to drop in to a class (the very last class of the first three weeks, when drop-ins are open to all for 101 level classes).

It was great. Except maybe for the part where... well. Straps basically involves wrapping 2" wide canvas or webbing straps around your wrists and then putting your full body weight on them. If you've ever had any nerve damage in your hands or fingers, or just know anything about where the nerves are in the wrists, you might be cringing right now. It's 24 hours later, and I'm still waiting for the feeling to fully return to the backs of my thumbs.

There's probably something to learn about how to grip the straps to mitigate that somewhat, in the same way I learned how to put on a footlock that wouldn't crush my foot in silks. But it's worth some caution.

But other than that, it was a lot of super macho (noting that I was one of two guys in the 5-person class, and we were the bottom of the class) gymnastic strength exercises meant to build up to various straps moves. Well, and doing some of those moves. For dropping in in week 3, it probably helped that I had enough aerials background including some specifically straps stuff to be able to immediately parse everything. "Okay, we're going to do meathooks now..." "Great. I don't know if my meathooks are still any good, but I totally know what that is." Or we'd do some exercise that I could immediately see was part of a progression to side planche-- great! I'd love to learn side planche! Etc.

I should totally find a way to take this class for real.