Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Back to our regular programming....

I really hope things are back to normal. In December I found out my pap smear was abnormal -- that led to multiple biopsies including a surgery the end of January. Everything is apparently okay, but training was on a hiatus til 2 weeks post-op, i.e. nothing til last Thursday.

Thursday Mel and I went for a short easy early morning run. Saturday I went for an easy run with Dave (well, he ran off ahead of me, which was fine as it was planned). Sunday we had a lovely easy bike ride in Long Beach, starting at the Queen Mary and riding to and around the Naples area of Long Beach then back to the Queen Mary.

Monday morning Dave and I went to the track to calibrate our Polar foot pods (my HRM had disappeared some weeks(?) ago and I replaced it Sunday -- these simple words do nothing to express my utter dismay, especially as there were a few workouts that didn't get downloaded) and do our runs.

This was also the beginning of my training plan from Phase IV -- I was supposed to do an easy 30 min run, so I ran/walked another 16 min or so after my (yes, very slow) guestimated 14 min mile time from my (entirely run, no walk breaks, yes, I already said really slow) mile calibration.

Today I did a long slow distance run of 4 miles, starting at the house and eventually ended up down by the beach (which means the latter mile of the run was mostly walked to keep my heartrate in the required range, since the majority of that last mile is uphill).

The goal for this period of base training is to keep my HR between 123-150 average while running. It used to be that ANY running would boost my HR to, say, 180; at least now I can run and have it lower than that, but to keep it in that 123-150 range....let's say it's no problem if I'm running even slightly downhill, but even on flats it's hard for me to run slow enough to keep it in that range.

I'll get better, I have before, it's just really frustrating to know how much in better shape I was a year ago, how much I lost in the past 6 months.

Of course the current theory is that this time last year I was overtraining, which probably led to my immune system being suppressed, which led to me being sick all fall, and very likely even the abnormal Pap.

My current training plan is expressly designed to prevent me from overtraining.

Balance. I will find balance.