edprnrmadrid — Kwame Osei-Sarfo's Running Blog — Something About Kwame Osei-Sarfo, Ph.D.

Monday: Rest Day (technically)

Since my beer club was meeting in downtown Brooklyn, and I finished work a bit early. I decided to hop on a Citibike and ride from work to Brooklyn, which was about 10 miles.

I really enjoyed my ride along the Hudson River, which is pretty beautiful around dusk. During my bike ride, I was wondering why I stopped biking. Maybe after NYC Marathon, I'll get back into biking again. Well . . . maybe not. I think that I stopped doing long bike rides (50+ miles) because I became annoyed about constantly having to change my bike's tires.

Of course, having a nice IPA after the 10-mile bike ride was a very well deserved reward because those Citibikes are quite heavy.

Tuesday: 3mi

An easy treadmill run. Nothing groundbreaking to write about. Well . . . I think that I was supposed to run 5 miles. Oh well.

Wednesday: Rest

Thursday: Hill workout and x-training

I think this workout might have screwed me up for Saturday's long run. I probably did too much during this workout. Since it was raining outside, I decided to do my hill workout a treadmill. Note to self: No more hill workout on treadmills at New York Sports Club.

The workout plan was to do 0.25 mi "sprints" on a 7-8% incline with a 0.25 mi cool down on a 2% incline. The workout was going pretty well until the 2nd to the last interval when the treadmill started to freak out a bit. Unfortunately, the treadmill's speed controls stopped functioning so I had to literally jump off of the belt. The crappy state of NYSC's cardio machines is a major pet peeve of mine. For example, on several occasions, I've had to move to 2, 3, 4 different cardio machines to find one that works properly. Ugh.

I have been trying to include more strength training for this marathon. Mainly, I'm doing to high rep/low weight for these sessions.

While training for last year's NYC Marathon, I noticed that I would have soreness in my hip abductors, especially after my long runs. Now, I have been trying to focus a bit more on my lower body. I thought that my weight training season went pretty buuuuut . . .

Friday: Rest

Saturday: A hot mess

The plan was to run 14 miles. Unfortunately, I managed to run only 1.6 miles because my hip abductors were very sore. I figured that it would be better to reattempt the run on another day rather than struggling through the run. Also, I did not have the motivation or desire to fight through my soreness for another 12.4 miles. I think that I will have to give myself a longer recovery time after my strength workouts, especially if I'm doing anything other than easy runs on the same day. I do not think that I'm too injured because both my left and right hip abductors were sore. Maybe I just overworked the muscles on the hip abductor/adductor machines.

At least I was in high hopes just before starting the run.

Sunday: 4mi

At first, I was going to reattempt the previous day's 14mi run, but I knew that I would not have enough time for the run before going on some random Sunday adventures. Instead, I decided to run a few 800m intervals on the treadmill after a 1mi warm-up. Fortunately, this treadmill did not give me any problems.

Random:

I am really enjoying Matthew Futterman’s Running to the Edge, which contains a series of stories about Bob Larsen’s quest to train elite U.S. mid- and long-distance runners.

Random II:

For some reason, I have been jamming to Laura Pausini all week. Hopefully, she will have another concert in NYC very soon.

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https://www.strava.com/athletes/26357948

Alrighty, here we go. Time to train for another marathon and this one will be in Madrid.

Before I begin, I guess that I'm officially registered for NYC's Marathon, which will be held on Sunday, Nov. 1st. It looks like there will be no Halloween festivities for me this year. Man. Back in 2005, if you told me that I would pay over 200 bucks to run a marathon, I would have looked at you like you had ten heads. My how things have changed.

Although this was the first week of training for Madrid's marathon, I have not 100% decided on a marathon training plan. I'm pretty much going to take bits and pieces from multiple training plans. Some from Hanson's Method, Hal Higgons, and Front Runners of NY. Like most of my marathon training plans, we all know that this plan more than likely will go to sh*t by week 8 or 9. Why do I set myself up for failure? ;)

General Training Crap

-This is probably a stupid idea, but I completed my first week of 16:8 intermittent fasting (IF). It seems a bit weird to do IF while training for a marathon, but I really need to lose some weight. It's simple physics or mechanics; smaller things tend to move faster. My big a** needs to move faster.

Tuesday was a bit of a fail because the office catered lunch from Dinosaur BBQ. I'll be damned if I will turn down free BBQ. Oh, Dino BBQ's creamed corn is SOOOOO amazing.

Monday: Strength Training and 3.25mi

Tuesday: Strength Training

Wednesday: x-train

Thursday: Speedwork (Morning) + Zumba (Evening)

Since I obviously would to get faster at some point in my life, I definitely will need to incorporate more speed (and hill) work during this training regimen. Yeah, I'll probably never return to my 8:30min/mi half marathon pace status from seven or eight years ago, but I can always try.

For my speed workout, I wanted to run twelve 0.25mi hard intervals with 0.25mi easy recovery. I was kind of excited to do this workout because I found a portion of Central Park that has a 0.25mi circular dirt path.

However, I think that I was too excited because I did not notice how cold (25F) it was on Thursday morning until I started to run the intervals. After running about 4 of these intervals, my fingers were quite cold, and I had to run to the nearest New York Sports Club. After the run, I jogged to the gym to stretch, but my fingers were still feeling weird for 30 minutes after the run. So I learned an important lesson from this workout - WEAR GLOVES FOR ANY OUTDOOR WORKOUTS BELOW 30F. Actually, I don't even know where my running gloves are.

Since I did not do as much as I wanted to on the "track", I decided to hit up a Zumba class, which I've been missing. Since joining New York Sports Club, I have not attended a Zumba class since January. I think that I attended my last Zumba a week before Christmas.

The Zumba class was just oooookay. I'm not sure if this was because I'm not used to this instructor's method of teaching . . . aka the spazztastic method. I probably will not make this class a weakly thing. One of my biggest pet peeves with Zumba is when the instructor does not have his/her playlist together. We should not have to stop after every song so you can find the next song.

Friday: HIIT and Stretching

Saturday: Long run (10.5mi)

The plan was to run 12 miles, but my strugglin' a** was a bit tired. I think that I had one too many of gin tonics at one of my favorite Spanish restaurants (Tomiño Taberna Gallega) the night before. See, I'm already screwing up my marathon training.

For this long run, I wanted to try a completely different route so I ran from Harlem to Fort Lee, NJ.

My run was just ok, but I probably put in about 70% effort on this run. I really was not feeling this run. It was one of those runs where you look at your GPS tracker and you are like: Wait! I've only completed 2 miles. I thought that I was at mile 4 or 5. After mile 2, I knew that the run was going to be a bit of a struggle. Going forward, there will be no hanging out on Friday nights . . . Well, very minimal hanging out on Fridays.

Oh one cool thing about the run: I found $10 bucks during the run. Dollar, dollar bills, y'all.

Upcoming Race: Rockapulcorun V-Day Half Marathon (Feb. 15)

According to the email that the organizer sent, it looks like there will be a brunch after the race. I wonder if there will be unlimited mimosas? ;)

we will be at Rogers Pub from 8:30 am on. Number pick up and race day reg. Then a nice Brunch after the Half. Sign up and our full calendar at www.rockapulcorun.com

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