I skipped Marathon Monday last week. I’ve been enjoying the self-imposed accountability of having set a goal (and time limit) to write about marathon training for 45 minutes every Monday but last week, I took a rain check. I had an usually busy Monday which included a 4am wake-up call to travel to the airport, a flight to Chicago, ubering directly to two different work sites, meeting with colleagues until 6pm and eventually dragging what was left of myself into my hotel room (with Deep Dish pizza to-go in-hand) to do nothing short of crash at 7:30pm. Did I have time to write? You bet. Did I have any inkling of mental focus left? None. Could I have managed my time and schedule better to get it done anyways? Probably! While it always feels a bit grating to flake out on something you said you would do, it’s important to remember why you’re doing it in the first place. In this case, this is just a blog I write for fun and forcing myself to type mindlessly for 45 minutes “just to check it off the list” is not the reason I wanted to start writing regularly.
This ended up being a helpful exercise to go through, as it turns out, as I decided to make some other cuts to the plan last week. Let’s be honest, traveling for work is a hoot. You get to explore a new city, eat lots of meals out, meet colleagues face-to-face that you’ve only ever seen through the lens of Zoom or Teams and its generally just a pretty fun change of scenery and a great way to focus on a project when it’s go-time. An added bonus for me is that I get to explore new places to run! Over the last 8 years my work travels have taken me to incredible places like Alaska, Montana, Vancouver, Las Vegas, Iceland, Denver and Chicago – there’s really not a tonne to complain about. Despite all the perks, work travel really messes with the sense of routine and generally, I end up feeling pretty exhausted. Strange sleep schedules, spending time on a plane, being on-the-go and “forgetting” to eat or drink water for 8 hours, eating take-out or restaurant meals, and often being around people/actively socializing for 12 hours a day, it’s all part of the deal. Them drinks be flowing at business meals, too and you need to be “on”. When I’m away for work and without being grounded by my partner, my home, my friends, my Nespresso machine, I become overly hyper-focused on the project I’m working on and I find it difficult to disconnect from work-mode – everything in my surroundings feels like “being at work” and the signals I receive tell me I should be answering emails, teams messages at all hours of the day. I find it hard to sleep, to turn my brain off and to compartmentalize parts of the day so that I can regenerate my battery at night. My stress tolerance feels like it goes to shit. And so, I’ve learned that I need to pay attention and adjust my training accordingly.
I had a fairly long workout planned midweek while I was away – 6 x 1mile at marathon pace, with 2min at 5km pace in between each rep, with a minute of rest between each bout of intensity (this is a buildup to a fun marathon workout that my friend Jesse introduced me to, I believe he got it from Myron). I absolutely could have made time for it before work one morning but I could feel a level of exhaustion creeping in on me that was not normal; I decided to save it for another week. I adjusted my goals for the week to just getting out for a 30-60 minute easy run each morning to keep my body moving, start my day by clearing my mind and not setting the expectations too high. I wouldn’t say that I was overly stressed, but I could feel that my stress levels were definitely elevated, my tolerance was lower and maybe trying to cut my sleep short to fit in a massive workout before a mentally demanding day might not really cut it from a cost/benefit perspective. A training plan is a plan, and a plan is always written in pencil, not permanent marker.
It’s definitely a fine line to walk, deciding when to give to that feeling of “this is too much” and when to push through. I certainly don’t want to create a habit of not following through on what I set out to do, or skipping workouts to stay out and have an extra drink with coworkers. I think it’s by giving ourselves the benefit of the doubt sometimes that we learn when we really just need to dial it back for a few hours, a day, a week vs. when we really have more in the tank.
I made it back home to Canmore around 1am on Friday night, enjoyed a luxurious sleep in, late morning breakfast and a full half-day of lounging with my fiancé Andrei before we ventured out for our long run workout, late on Saturday afternoon. I immediately felt like shit and as the warmup progressed before we broke out into our intervals, I started coming up with excuses in my head to get me out of doing the hard work. I was tired from a week away, maybe I was getting sick, my breathing felt too hard, I overdressed, this is not my day. I was starting to lay the ground work and drop hints aloud to Andrei to politely suggest he carry on without me when he said “Welp, sounds like a great day to give it a try anyways and see what happens”. Fuck, he was onto me and he wasn’t going to let me finagle my way out. And so, we gave the workout a go, and we crushed it. Our watches went a little berserk as soon as we started the intensity and Andrei thought we were going too slow, so he took off. I started to worry that maybe my watch was actually too fast, so I decided I better catch up to him to make sure I’m hitting the paces. Turns out, Andrei would hear my footsteps behind him and worry he was slowing down, so he’d sped up. I would get even more concerned that my watch was off, I matched his move, and the cycle continued. Long story short, we spanked the workout, got a huge confidence boost (and maybe a lesson learned in not running too hard). I’m glad I didn’t give in on that one. LFG.
Last (two) week’s of training:
Jan 15 – 21 – Big Volume Week for me (62km, 550m elevation running, 47km, 435m elevation skiing, 10 h 15 minutes total)
Monday – 5 x 1km @ 10km effort, 400m easy (~9.5km)
Tuesday – Rest Day
Wednesday – AM: Peaks of Grassi Dawn Patrol (7.8km easy trail)
PM: Beginner Michigan on the Treadmill (15 minutes @ Goal Marathon Pace, 7 minutes @ 5km pace, 7 minutes @ Goal Marathon Pace, 3mins hard) ~11km
Thursday – Dirtbags easy (it was still friggin’ freezing). ~7.4km trail
Friday – 13km XC Classic Ski
Saturday – 3 x 6km @ Goal Marathon Pace + 10s/km
Sunday – 34km XC Classic Ski
Jan 22 – 28 (60km, 318m elevation ~ 5hrs)
Monday – Rest Day
Tuesday – 8km easy
Wednesday – 6km easy
Thursday – 6 x 400m, 40s rest. 2 x 1 mile @ 10k effort (10.4km)
Friday – Rest Day
Saturday – 8 x 1km @ Goal Marathon Pace +15s/km, 500m @ Goal Marathon Pace -5s/km. We did all the reps way too fast 😐
Sunday – 14km easy
This one time I went running 