Wow! I am pleasantly surprised in my body's ability to bounce back from my 23-miler this past Saturday night. I have a little muscle soreness but nothing too bad considering I increased my long run in one week by 5.5 miles! For you quantitative people, that's about a 31% mileage increase in one week. Not your typical 10% increase rule now is it? Well, that really doesn't hold true much when you have more than 10 years in the sport and you really know what works and doesn't with your body. Plus, having migrated into ultrarunning in the past few years, I have noticed that I can handle a higher volume increase while keeping healthy.
Anyway, the body is feeling good. I spent 40 minutes on PowerCranks tonight to loosen up the muscles and will follow-up with a 5-6 mile run tomorrow. By the way, PowerCranks are my "secret weapon" in my running program as they have a tremendous positive impact on my economy and ability to recruit my run specific motor units (it improves my body's ability to utilize my neuromuscular system to improve running pace). If you don't know about PowerCranks, I would highly recommend reading about them (www.powercranks.com).
This weekend will be quite challenging to fit in the long run as I have an early morning LT test to do on one of my athletes on Saturday, then will speed back home to spend quality time with the family before coaching my son's soccer game. Saturday night, however, I fly to North Carolina at midnight to present at a USA Triathlon Level II Coaching Clinic. So, that leaves me with a window of about 7:30-10:30pm to fit in a run. Because of the reduced timeframe, I will make it a much higher quality run with some threshold sets of 6-10 minutes every 30 minutes or so. You didn't know that speed sessions are still important for ultrarunners, did you? Well, yep! They sure are! After all is said and done, I hope to sleep like a baby on the flight to the east coast!
Have a great week! Until this weekend...
Coach Bob
coachbob@fuel4mance.com
