Marathon Training (week 4)

One month of solid training has proven to been very successful so far. A couple of milestones occurred this week, which I feel proud of. First off, I finished up my summer school classes for grad school and only have my thesis and student-teaching to finish up by December. This summer encompassed 2 huge classes that I never thought would end, but thank God it's over... for now. I guess it was slightly easy to focus these past few weeks, as Laura is in Europe on vacation, which gives me sometime to sit in front of a computer and get shit done, as well as nap, since this weeks mileage tied my highest week ever.

So, after starting the week off with some easy miles, I only had 2 major workouts for the week. 6x1 mile repeats on Wedesnday and a long run with 2x2 miles at tempo pace on Sunday. I've been playing around with caffeine before major workouts and instead of focusing all my research attention towards my thesis, I decided to find some articles that supported caffeine consumption before endurance activity. As everyone knows, caffeine is a psychoactive ergogenic stimulant that helps with endurance athletes. My question was how much is beneficial, and how much is too much for what can be considered a dependent stimulant? Since I don't consume much caffeine on a daily, or weekly bases, I figured I might as well start! As of a few weeks ago, I started double brewing black tea for my pre-workout caffeine consumption; and in long runs, I'd use GU with caffeine, as I have in the past. The black tea only produces about 40mg of caffeine per brew, so it totals about 80mg of caffeine. The GU has about 35mg of caffeine in it. So what the heck does this mean...? Well, the scholarly study that I found (2007 Sports Medicine Australia) basically made it clear that with "well trained" athletes in the 5km would have a 1% improvement with the use of 5mg of caffeine per kg of body weight 60 minutes prior to their time trial. Well, that doesn't quite help me if I want to do well in a workout that may last 4 times that time frame, or in a race. With my weight I may have to consume around 300mg of caffeine before any type of "hard" workout or race. But, regardless of the caffeine intake, there's staggering amounts of evidence that show with any amount of caffeine consumption provides benefits, as caffeine is a psychoactive drug that acts as a blockade to the central nervous system receptors and effects perceived levels of fatigue. So, basically, it's helping when I use it during and before workouts.

So, with all that, the mile repeats on the river where great. A bunch of us met at Nature Center at 6am, did a little warm-up and started the workout. I was able to hit them in (4:59, 4:53, 4:53, 4:53, 4:55, 4:51) with 4-5 minutes jog rest in between. The next workout was actually a sushi eating "contest" Saturday night before the long run... 5 of us: Mark, Chris P., Pat, Dana and myself went to this sweet all you can eat sushi place and just pigged out while tallying how many pieces we ate. The final tally over the 3 hours and to the best of my recollection: Chris P. - 50 pieces, Pat - 50, Mark - 45, Me - 38, Dana - 32. Then of course Sunday came around and we had a 20 miler with the 2x2 miles at tempo pace/effort. A nice and easy 5 mile warm-up was followed by the first segment in 10:30, then 2 minutes easy jogging and a 10:25 for the final 2 mile portion, followed by the remainder of a little more than 10 miles. All and all, it was a nice week of 130 miles.

Mon - am. 10 easy

Tue - am. 12 easy / pm. 8 easy

Wed - am. 6x1 miles (4:59, 4:53, 4:53, 4:53, 4:55, 4:51) total: 12 / pm. 8 easy

Thur - am. 10 easy / pm. 10 easy

Fri - am. 10 easy / pm. 10 easy

Sat - am. 11 med/easy / pm. 9 easy

Sun - am. 20 w/ 2x2 miles at tempo w/2min recovery (10:30, 10:25)

Total: 130