I got up at 5:30 this morning for an easy 4 miles. I got up yesterday morning at 5:30 for an easy 4 miles. I also did a lower body strength training workout late yesterday afternoon. I am tired. More specifically, my legs are tired.
According to my training plan, these easy runs are supposed to be at a 10:14/mile pace, but in reality, I did both of them at a 10:06/mile pace. Yesterday, my average heart rate was 158, today it was 153. But today felt harder than yesterday. My legs felt heavier…slower.
I think what this says is that while my cardiovascular system can handle these back-to-back easy runs, with lower body strength training mixed in, my legs aren’t quite there. Perhaps it’s just a matter of time until they are accustomed to the additional workload—this is the first week of my half marathon training, after all. Or maybe I need to scale way back on the strength training, leaving in just enough to keep myself balanced.
For the record, while I am struggling a little bit to get out of bed for these early morning runs, once I’m out there running, I really like it.
I find my body really struggles with back to back runs as well when I'm doing strength training. I've ditched the lower body training until my half marathon is over.
Posted by Andrew is getting fit on 7/30/2008 2:20:59 PM
Andrew, that's typically what's happened to me in the past--as I am training for a specific race, weight training falls by the wayside, or is drastically reduced. I've made some good strength gains in the last month and a half, so this time around, hopefully I can keep up most of the strength training. But if push comes to shove, I'll definitely drop it for the running.
Posted by Bryan on 7/30/2008 3:58:38 PM