PUSH - Five Week 90K per week - No Excuses!

March 2014 - PUSH - Persist Until Something Happens
SECOND WEEK
2nd - 26K group run. Treat it as a training run. 2:11. Mark goes for a 30K and returns 2:05 for 28K. GK pulls up behind.

3rd - 18k.
4th - 20K in 1:40. Borura pushes me. I am beginning to feel strength. That feeling of strength is so freaking powerful. When you are past 19K but instead of feeling tired, heavy legs, you feel alright and when you are through with your workout, your feet are springy, your gait athletic and you dont feel wasted. Its been a long time since I felt this way. Yesterday I was wasted by the 18K and couldn't find water after running in the sun.After the 20K I was alright.
5th - 16k. Some old guy says he admires my effort. There is some fattish chick who I see running in the estate when we are going to work. When I see her running, with all that weight, all excuses for not running vanish. You never know who you can inspire.
6th- 12K 24X200m Splits: 44:09, :43.1 , :42.1 , :45.9 , :45.3 , :41.8 , :41.7 , :41.8 , :41.9 , :42.9 , :44.7 , :47.3 , :44.4 , :43.7 , :42.9 , :44.9 , :46.5 , :43.0 , :45.1 , :44.8 , :45.9 , :41.9 , :40.3 , :39.9  


This Weeks Total: 92K
THIRD WEEK

8th - 24K in 1:55 avg pace 4:49 Mombasa road
9th - 22K Upper hill route. Fat, er, First Ladys marathon. Mark passes me on Mbagathi way descent.
10th - AM 18K in 1:27 its so cold. I practically beg the sun to come out. Egerton University field. PM 7K easy.
11th - 19K in 1:27 avg 4:37. PM 7K easy.
12th- Moderate 19K in 1:31
13th - 10K. Garmin refuses to come on. So I download an Android app called MyTracks and go do speedwork.
14th - Rest n travel back to Nai.
Very great week - enjoyed the field and energy at Egerton uni. I pushed it mileage wise. I was able to make the easy runs easy and watch my diet despite the challenges of being away from home. Now next week I can reduce mileage and pile on intensity. Weight is dropping just fine. I note that I will need to do a 57mins 14K on the track if I am to go sub 1 hour 14K on Eastlands route. I will also need to do 26K in 1:50 on Mombasa road before I can hope to do sub 1:52 26K on Eastlands route.
Psyche is building among the group. Sikuku and Ogutu are back. Sikuku gets his ankle sprained.

This Weeks Total: 126K

FOURTH WEEK
15th - 25K Mombasa road in 1:55:16. Avg 4:37. Tremendous improvement from last Saturday. The last 5K kick my butt but my slowest split is 5:13 compared to last weeks 5:35 and avg of 4:49 in a 24K that took me 1:55:34. This is good. It rained the whole night. I started running from 9:04 after realizing the rain wont stop. I have really improved over the moderate hills. The two hills that kick my butt are now the Tmall/Winson hill and Uhuru Gardens hill. I will conquer them. Weight is 72Kgs. I will run it down to 68-69Kgs in two weeks. Injury is still giving me grief after the long hard runs. My next challenge/target is to run 26K in 1:55. If I succeed next Sunday, I will add more hills on the route then I assault the Eastlands route mid April.

16th -  20K on upper hill. Had about two hours sleep. Painful adductors. From uhuru highway to uhuru park junction - what I consider preparation for the main task - I had some annoying pain in my glutes. Then I decided I wont waste that hill. Glutes be damned. So I took off and tired in the next junction. I slowed down then glanced back. Thats when I saw Mark. I recovered instantly and accelerated and got my breath back again at national library. From there I sped up the Kenyatta hospital hill and then at the top, decided to punish mbagathi way the way G Mutai punishes the tarmac. Then my bloody shoe laces come off. I tied them as Mark passed and I decided to challenge myself to chase Mark and give him a push. It was tough coz he was also flying. I pull a 3:38 min/km. It was great. I need to cut weight.
5:34 - Glutes aching from Muthurwa
4:50 - Upper Hill and a bit of Kenyatta n tying shoe laces
4:24 - giving chase
3:38 - downhill
4:26  - taper off back to Langatta road. - 22:52
I will use this as a benchmark for Sundays
17th - 21K in 1:36 avg 4:35min/km. I felt pretty good and even considered doing a 26K but it leaves me feeling like a train-wreck.
18th - 17K easy. Painful hammies and upper back. I believe I discovered my efficient running style yesterday (17th) but we will wait and see. Weight at 71.5. 
19th - Go to the field undecided on what kind of workout to do. I dont feel particularly strong or ready to do speed work, which I have scheduled for kesho. Hmmmm...what do I do? I did an easy run yesterday. I cant do another easy today surely? I aint no pussy.
So I decide to do a tempo run. Maybe 7KX3? I decide to go hard and let the chips fall where they will. I start with a slow 4:39 but see what happens:
1.    4:39            
2.    4:26            
3.    4:22            
4.    4:13            
5.    4:08            
6.    4:11            
7.    4:13            
8.    4:15            
9.    4:15            
10.    4:08            
11.    4:10            
12.    4:11            
13.    4:16            
14.    4:12            
15.    4:14            
16.    4:22            
17.    4:13    
In this 17K I set PRs for 5k 20:56 (btwn Km 10 and Km 14), 7k 29:23 (btwn Km 5 and Km 11) and 10k 41:50 and 17K in 1:12:28. Average 4:16min/Km.

PRs are encouraging. My speed is intact. My endurance is improving. I have a left calf injury lets see what we can do about it.
20th - 12K moderate. Testing how bad the left calf is. I manage the 12K without it blowing up so I guess its not that bad. Will take NSAIDs for two days.
21st - Rest Day. Try some ART on the left calf. Visitors trooping into our house today for Deyas wedding kesho so running has to wait for two days, which is fine. I need some rest. This was a great week even though I didn't do speed-work.

This Weeks Total: 115K

FIFTH WEEK
23rd - 26k. Deya's wedding. Had a crazy day on Saturday. Was up at 5:30am. My house had about 8 excited girls and two women so Friday night slept a few winks. Took car for wedding deco at 6am. Drove around the matron n flower girls. Wedding. Dinner at 9:30pm. Went to a culture concert for house music at 11pm. Danced till 3:30am. I knew being on my feet would have its toll but then again...so anyway slept at 4am. Alarm at 5:40am. I woke up. My head wooly. My world a mesh of cobwebs. I winced and readjusted the alarm to 6am and allowed the fog of sleep to swallow me. In exactly one second later, the alarm rangs. I blinked at the phone. It was 6am. I set the new alarm to 6:30am based on some sleepy logic. Two seconds later, just when I had snuggled comfortably in the warm bosom of the goddess of sleep, the alarm rang. I turned it off and contemplated my fate. Goosh man! I remembered Desiderata vaguely.
I hauled heavy feet onto the floor and plodded away from the bed. I shook my head to clear the fog. My brain crawled back to the present. How slow was my run going to be? Could I still expect to set PRs after such a crazy 48 hours? I figured that if sleep could make people fast then slow people could just sleep for long hours and wake up fast. But I knew deep inside that my legs were rubbish. But I had 100k to cover by Friday and I couldnt waste Sunday. So I stepped out of the house into the cold dawn and jogged to the gate. I stretched as I evaluated the status of my left calf injury. I set off repeating to my groggy mind again and again: I am well hydrated. I am strong and I am fast. I covered 7k in 30:03, 9k in 38:35, 14k in 1:01:11 which were decent and the fastest I have run on the roads this year. The punishment started at 15k. By 18k I gave up and jogged the rest of the distance. I banked 26k and burn 2000plus calories. I am glad. I can only hope that stressing my feet like that made them stronger and that it wasn't a waste.
Now that the injury seems to be out of the way, I want to hammer this week the fuck out.

Keep rolling.
24th - 18K. I am wasted. No energy.
25th - 17K with 37 X 200m. Pain in my left hip. I decide to do speed-work since I should now start moving towards speed and away from mileage. So to do proper speed-work, I decide to do it on Tuesday (Thursday is not guaranteed) and I settle on 200m repeats. 1000m would be better but I dont feel like 1000m repeats. I know of successful marathoners who have been fast on 200m repeats. I love them because they enable me to tap into my raw speed compared to 1000m or 2000m repeats. I have grown quite strong and faster but mostly stronger. In fact, past the 18th repeat, my body recovered faster and I shortened the rest periods (I rested by running slowly). I was happy with the workout. I am torn between moving to 300m/400m repeats or just sticking with 200m repeats. Why not do 50 of them next week with shorter intervals rather than move to 1000m? Hmmm....
The splits: 46, 46, 46, 44, 46, 42, 42, 44, 43, 43, 43, 41, 44, 43, 42, 42, 41, 42, 43, 43, 42, 41, 41, 41, 46, 44, 43, 40, 42, 43, 43, 42, 43, 43, 41, 40, 40. Keep rolling fellas!
26th - 10K easy. Had a late meeting. But I also needed easy.
27th - 20K in 1:40. Wanted it to be fast but after 2K, I realized it wasn't gonna happen. I need to rest. There is pain in my left hip. The recovery of my adductors seems to have halted before 100%.

This Weeks Total: 91K

29th - 28K. I decide to do an easy 28K - easy in the sense that I run purely by how my body feels. I wanted to go hard and fast but after 2K, I accept that my legs are stiff (ankles, calves) and not firing like I would want to. I haven't recovered from Tuesday's speed run! So I decide to go easy and long. This is fucking confusing. I thought my body had become the master of recovery but it seems the speed workouts recruited and exhausted muscles that are rarely utilized hence the long recovery. This also means that maybe I should repeat this workout again and give myself some weeks to recover. My adductors ache even though the left hip pain is gone. Strange pain in my left quads. I massage it and take a rest.
My motivation takes a slump and I kinda eat a lot.

Hmmmmm....I need encouragement now.