Base training was a little scary but I managed it well. The first week I simply upped my run frequency and took on only as much as my body felt comfortable with. That's a lie. By the end of the week I saw that nice round 70km mark and went for it. I felt it at the beginning of week two, my legs weren't quite ready for that, so I started a little easier, but by the end of the week that 70 was coming up again. However, this time I didn't feel quite so beat up. The third week was easy. 70 again. As you may or may not know, for most of my running life I've muddled around the 30km mark. Seeing that number more than double was such a cool feeling.
Weeks four-six are the hardest. I'm supposed to hold that volume and introduce hard workouts. Due to my time constraints I omitted the slowly-building-intensity phase and jumped right into serious work. This was somewhat daunting, but hey, I only have to do it for three weeks right? And heck, I'm a 70km/week runner now! Week four had some solid running at 3:15/km pace, some tempo intervals at 3:34/km pace and a 5km race. Week five had the same 3:15/km intervals, a 30-40 minute tempo run somewhere around 3:40/km and a bunch of fast 400s.
An important concept in training is to introduce new stresses slowly so as not to shock the system. Of course there are always exceptions but a standard, conservative training plan won't have you crank up intensity and total volume. Last week I bumped up to 75km. Sure, what's an extra 5km right? I also started going to UWO Tri Club practices. I also started going out more. And of course school is starting to pick up. This week I don't think I've been home for dinner more than twice. I'm getting good at finding free food on campus. I'm also getting good at falling asleep in weird places. And making beds out of things. Sunday night I was out until 2:30 yet up by 5:30. I got more sleep during the day and went to bed early so I wasn't totally wrecked for Tuesday. I got home at midnight on Wednesday and was still up Thursday morning at 6am for my tempo run. By the end of it I could feel a tickle in my chest. The rest of the day I was seriously sleepy so had another early night. This morning I got up fairly quickly but had that thick throat feeling and didn't feel all that rested... but not sleepy. So I made my way to the track, hammered 400m intervals in the dark and cooled down on the spin bikes with Tri Club. The rest of the day was garbage.
There are all sorts of stresses. Some of it will push your body to adapt and become faster or stronger, but most of it won't. At the end of the day all of these types of stress are poured into the same vessel. When you're pushing your limits in training, that cup is always nearly full. You pile school on there and you get a nice display of surface tension. Add an extravagant social life and after a little while you might find yourself on the couch the Friday night of homecoming weekend editing a blog that no one reads.
Don't worry, me, you'll figure it out.
Adam "Lesson learned" Fortais
