Why the hell am I numbering these?
Last night right when I was about to go to bed, I made a change on my phone that changed my life forever.
Is that clickbaity enough?
In short, I’ve had Garmin Coach up with a training plan for my 10k in July. When you set up a training plan, it gives you a “goal” with two basic options: Completion, or Goal Time. Completion is what you think it is. Actually, Goal Time is too now that I think about it.
When I signed up, I opted for Completion because I wasn’t sure how I’d do at running 6.2 miles. In return, GC and my grandpappy Coach Jeff Galloway set me up with a very simple workout routine, consisting of two cadence and “Acceleration-Glider” drills (aka strides) a week plus the trademarked Run Walk Run®, which was never more than 2.5 miles.
This was … fine. Boring, but fine. But I’ve done it for a couple of weeks now and it didn’t seem to want to get any harder, which I was desperately seeking.
So last night, laying in bed, about to go to sleep, I futzed around with GC and decided to enter my Goal Time for my 10k, because I have one now, and it’s slow as hell: Goal A (or ideal goal) is 1:15, which is a 12:04/mi, abysmally slow but something I’m capable of doing. Goal B is 1:30, and Goal C is just to complete it. I’m at a point now where I’m pretty sure I can complete it. So I look up the goal times on GC and discover that my Goal A is the absolute last goal you can pick on the app. So I picked it.
Folks, the app comPLETELY changed my workouts to actual god damn workouts. Look at this:
This is what I did this morning! Cadence drills, strides, plus the “magic mile” for pacing purposes and 6x 800m runs at goal pace with 3 minute recovery periods. An actual workout! With distance!
I feel great. This is my long run, technically (more on that in a second), and being able to run/walk over the 10k distance without feeling it too much is awesome. Plus, according to Garmin, my 10k time for this workout alone was 1:21:53, which means I’ve got 1:15 in the bag and will likely have to move my Goal Time up a bit. We’ll see how the rest of the week progresses.
Meanwhile, I tried to reschedule my long runs to Sunday, the proper day, and ended up fucking up my entire training plan for the next two weeks. Now I have four workouts this week instead of three, and it added another long run this Sunday that’s ELEVEN MILES. And then the next week is all rest days, and I can’t change it and I don’t know why. It’s a mess and I’ll probably have to skip a workout or add unscheduled workouts to my phone or something. I have no idea how I’m going to do 11 miles this week. It’s honestly too much and I’ll likely have to skip it and try to move it to the week after. It’s much more than a 10% leap and I don’t want to injure myself.
Update: GC now shows the long run as 7 miles, not 11. That might be a little more manageable. We’ll see.
In other news, I’ve begun filming a “day in the life” video for YouTube. Why? I have no idea. Just seemed like something to do. My life is pretty boring but I felt like maybe it would be neat to see what I do on a regular day. I have no idea when it will be edited and uploaded to YouTube.
So: This week is going to be intense. Lots of running and significant drills for hills and speed practice. Like, actually training me for stuff. I’m hoping my legs can carry me through it.
This weekend’s just a parkrun and then in a couple of weeks I’m 40. I haven’t dwelled on it at all…
