Week Starting Monday, November 9 (Week 5)

Sunday, Nov 14
Tim: The 36 min run today was decent. I am getting a little tired of this wind though... but then again as I am typing this it is 53 degrees and raining in Eugene... so HA!!!! I can deal with the wind. I have been battling an injury for like 3 years now and it hasn’t given me too much a problem thus far, but I fear/anticipate, that as I bump up volume and intensity, it may return. What is the injury? Comment below to find out :) We also did a 10 minute core session, which I need to start doing more often... I think my core is really lacking in strength. Welp, I’m off to work... until next time.

Matt: 10 Minutes of core. I like core. Still in the walking boot but the foot is definitely on the mend but I’ll probably wait a couple days more than I should to make sure it is 100% before I start running workouts. The last thing I want to do is jump in too early and then all of a sudden I have to rest it another week. It gets frustrating watching Mark and Tim workout while I sit around on my ass. So I will be really happy to get out there and push myself as hard as I can on a few workouts.
Prediction for my next workout? I think Saturday. What do you (the readers) think? We want people to comment on our blog below, not just on our facebook profiles. We will answer or address every comment posted on our blog, no matter the content.

Markie: I guess Matt decided I get to be Markie for today..anyway i ran 36 min with Tim today and followed it up with core with the the fellas. It was really nice to get a little break from workouts, as we wont be doing another session until Tuesday when we do a 3 mile tempo. Also Matt and I started playing a version of sorry where u are dealt 5 cards to play with and however many pieces more than your opponent you get to home in the end, is how many points you get...Matt is up 4-1. Its looking good for me having a job very soon, which is good, as I need to be able to pay rent and such...

Saturday, Nov 13
Tim: Today was considered our long run day even though it was only 49 minutes. This is the longest run I have completed since April 09. It was really windy today, but at least the sun was out. My body felt pretty well rested today too! I think i am starting to feel kinda like a runner again! ... oh and BY THE WAY!!! My two roommates are addicting to any form of game that has ever existed. The second I get home from either a run or work, its like.... “HEY WANNA PLAY (insert game here)?” Gotta love this guys... never a dull moment. :)

Matt: My foot is still swollen and I’m not convinced it’s improving at all so I’m wearing Mark’s walking boot as much as I can and am on an anti-inflammatory now. Still optimistic that it’s an aggravated tendon so rolling with that for now. Other than that news I had an absolutely boring day. Oregon football was a bust against Cal today but luckily we still won (15-13). Mark and I watched the first half on Justin.tv and then the boxing match came on so we had to refresh the GameChannel every 30 seconds to find out what was happening... Should have just driven up to Berkley and scalped a ticket. Since Mark is still jobless and home all day, we are playing alot of games. But today hit an all-time boredom-ness when we decided to start a game of Monopoly ... blah blah ... I just realized that Mark is talking about the same thing below so I’ll let you read his. Tim just walked in to the room and confirmed that the Harvest Festival that is literally two blocks from our apartment was indeed the shooting location for The League’s Halloween Episode (episode 7 about 9:30 min in). Wish I would have been there when they were shooting earlier in the fall.

Mark: Today was considered our long run because we ran for so long. We went into Pierce college and ran in the hills for a bit. I am intending to keep my long runs in this vicinity, but ideally, soon i will start going about 45 min and then doing 5-6x 200m strides and finishing with 5-10 more minutes. I think this will be more effective for me without breaking me down as much. Also with the lessened mileage I am doing this year I really need to start swimming 2-3 times a week, so I will be looking for somewhere indoors to start on that pretty soon as its way too cold in our outdoor pool. So today Matt and I came up with a new monopoly version...we shuffled all the properties and bid on each of them 1 by 1 with a $2,000 budget. It really adds a new level of strategy in the bidding at the beginning of the game, and the games go really fast too. I just realized Matt is talking about the same thing as me right now, so I thought about deleting it so he could talk about it since he isn't running right now and doesn’t have anything to talk about but nah lol. Oh yeah, and the monopoly tally is now at 5-0, and 2-0 with the new game style.

Friday, Nov 12
Mark: Pretty....tired after last night (from the....activities we...participated in...) but got up with Tim and ran 37 min on the bike path. Then since its amazing here I iced in the pool and then basked in the sun for half an hour..so awesome. Planning on 15-20 minutes of core work this afternoon as well. Me and Matt started our running tally for our monopoly games today, it’s now 2-0 me.

Matt: Foot still hurts so I upped the attention to detail and am icing 7-8 times a day now. I am hoping that this will go away by sometime next week. If it doesn’t I’m not sure what course of action I’ll take. So instead of being active today I lost two games of Monopoly games to Mark but came back to beat him at Halo. The three of us have also been enjoying the feedback we’re getting so far from the launch of our blog site. We bought the domain name PlayinInDirt.com last night too so you can just type that in to get to the site too.

Tim: The run this morning was sluggish. Although, we did get a solid 37 minutes in, I prolly stayed up playing games a little too late last night. I still have to go to work today from 2 - 10 pm. It is a good thing we are starting to run a little longer on our off days because 3.8 miles wasn’t really doing much for me at all. I definitely appreciate having Mark and Matt as training partners. I have a tendency to run too fast or too hard when I run alone, but never when either Mark or Matt is with me. :) We know how to recover.

Thursday, Nov, 11 - Workout Video!!!

Matt: Foot hurts. No running but did go and watch hills so I could film some stuff for the workout video for this week. Need to learn iMovie real quick...

Tim: Today Mark and I dominated Matt in Halo... and I mean, DOMINATED!!! Oh yeah and Mark and I also ran a hill workout. I defintely felt more tired than usual on these, however, I was still able to get through the entire workout without feeling like I over trained... but dang were my lungs burning!

Mark: Hill workout...15 min warmup to the hill and started it up...this is the one from the video. The whole workout I felt like I wasnt recovering well after each hill...prolly cuz we started out too quick for me so I pulled it back and only did 8 rather than slowing them down. I ended up hitting 43-45-44-43-43-45-43-43. Followed it up with some me and Tim vs Matt halo and we dominated him...and he keeps beating me in paper, rock, scissor...dont know why but he got the last piece of pumpkin pie cuz of it so I need to get on my game.

Wednesday, Nov 10
Matt: 25 min run - 10 min of core
I woke up today feeling pretty much completely back to normal. I felt rested and for the first time in almost a month didn't feel cold. My foot has steadily progressed and there was almost no pain today so I decided to test it with a 25 min run. Bad idea! Even though during the run it felt ok, as soon as I stopped all the pain came flooding back like a dam bursting. So now it's back to icing, rest, and rehab for a while.

Tim: 20 min run - 0 min of core
Today was a rough one for me. I woke up at 6:30am and went to work. I didn't get home till about 6:30pm... that sucked. I actually convinced myself that I was not going to run. But then as the guilt set in... and Matt and Mark began cooking a tasty meal without me, I figured I would get in a quick jog. When I got home... I went to sleep.

Mark: 25 min steady run, a bit fast but I think Matt was excited to be back and on his first run here so he went really fast....and now his foot hurts too bad to run for a few days...afterwards we hit 10 minutes of core and I iced my legs in the pool...and then Matt beat me in monopoly :(

Tuesday, Nov 9
Matt: No running today. I fell asleep accidentally before I at dinner and next thing I knew it was 7am and I had slept for 12 hours. I still felt pretty tired but am definitely on my way back to feeling normal.

Tim: 3 mile pace run
I wasn't feeling too great before this one, but I wasn't feeling horrible either. Just wanted to get in a good effort. My goal was to run all 3 miles under 5:20. It was pretty windy and I went out fast. 5:10, 5:18, 5:18 Finally, I am beginning to come around, as my last two were very sub par.

Mark: Tim and i did a pace run. I wanted to improve from last weeks, so the goal pace was sub 5:40 on all 3 miles. I hit 5:29-5:35-5:26 so I was quite pleased with that session. When I was with OTC last year, the lab testing we did determined my lactate threshold was 5:27 pace and my threshold heart rate range is 181-185, so anything around there on pace runs is a solid effort for me. Afterwards we got in the pool for a bit.

Monday, Nov 8
Matt: No running today. My first day back from being in ice cold Canada for 3 weeks and I am definitely feeling residuals from being in that kind of weather. I have been cold all day even though it is 70 degrees outside. Last night was the worst. I had a sheet, cotton blanket, fleece blanket, and a wool blanket and I was still so cold that I didn't sleep very well. I'm also still super tired from the trip.

Tim: Finally!!! Matt is back, but he somehow managed to injure himself while not running up in Canada. The easy run today was quite enjoyable. Nothin fancy... just a 30 min recovery run. Mark whined a lot though, so that was kinda tiring.

Mark: I went for an easy run. Loving the amazing sunshine everyday. After the run hopped in the pool to kinda ice the legs then got in the hot tub for a bit. Beat Matt in a couple games of monopoly in the afternoon...as usual he came back with the halo dominance later in the evening.





Matt's 4 week Recap
Before this week, I was in Ontario, Canada for 3 weeks working for RunnerSpace.com. I was involved in probably the most extensive, comprehensive coverage for a 4 week period in any region ever. We covered about 30 meets in 5 weeks, including streaming the provincial championships live on the last day. It was a pretty big undertaking and I was in charge of coordinating the majority of it as well as covering 10 meets myself. In one 12 day period I drove 2300 miles covering 9 meets. Needless to say my body and mind was pretty wasted by the end. In fact, during the last race of the last meet I did something to my foot while running around getting race footage. Feels like an agravated tendon but we'll see how it plays out over the next week or so. Hopefully not too big of an issue.

Tim's 4 week Recap:
Thursday: Welp, honestly... for not having run at all prior to starting up again with Matt and Mark I am actually pretty content with the way things are progressing. When Matt moved down here at the end of September I began running again. The previous year I professionally slacked off. No running for me... I definitely needed a break, physically and mentally. Anyway, back to this year. It has been sort of an interesting first month. The first couple weeks consisted mostly of 30 min runs at a very leisure pace. Then Matt left. Since then, Mark moved in and we began jumping into workouts almost immediately. Our first workout was a hill repeat session on Oct 15th. (See Mark's section for a recap) It has been a bit challenging for myself to get back into any kind of decent shape after a long, but much needed layoff. Tempo runs have been sluggish and I have not even been consistent with running every day. It just feels too good to not run sometimes. :) Regardless, I am doing this for fun over any other reason; which leads me to my next point. I am excited to share all of my training here, because I feel that Mark, Matt and I represent a lot of America's aspiiring athletes out there. We all have full time jobs, but have to find/make time in our day to run our little hearts out. I hope all you RunnerSpacers out there enjoy this little blog and that it is not only educational, but comical. Afterall, life without humor is one without meaning.

Mark's 4 week Recap:
Today is Wednesday the 10th, so I'm gonna put in a quick recap of our training so far to get things current to where we are now in our sessions. I went for my first run of the new season the day after I got to so cal on Oct 10th, and spent the first week doing easy 30 min runs with 2 days off on Wednesday and Saturday and an intro to hills doing 8 reps of our 200m hill with an average of 48 on Friday.

Week 2 Matt left for Canada on Monday, so Tim and I went solo for the next 3 weeks. Monday we took off, Tuesday we did 2 mile repeats with 2.5 min recovery and I was 5:22-5:18. Wednesday and Thursday was 25 min easy, Friday we did hills, I did 9, Tim was 10, and Tims brother Tony joined us and did 10 as well. We went 48-51-47-46-45-43- 44-45-43-(43). Saturday we ran 30 easy, and Sunday we took off.

Week 3 we ran an easy 30 on Monday and on Tuesday we did our first pace run. We did 3 miles and I ran 6:04-6:09-3:01. I was struggling bit with my heart rate (this is the only run I did or will wear the hr monitor as i needed to send it back to OTC) but it hit 196 at 1.5 miles and 205 at 2.5 so I just stopped there. My ideal range on threshold work should be 181-185, so I guess i just wasn't ready for that yet. Wednesday we took off and Thursday we ran 25 min easy. Friday we did 4x800 with 2:30 rest in 2:24-2:24-2:21-2:20. Saturday we took off, and Sunday I ran 40 min.

Week 4, on Monday we ran 30 min easy and Tuesday we did 10 hills alternating leading efforts in 47-45-43-43-43-43-44-43-43-41, a very solid improvement, but I almost threw up my McDonald's and we had to walk most of the way home....quote of the day, "my ears went lactic." Wednesday we ran 35 min steady and Thursday we ran a 3 mile pace run and I was 5:44-5:48- 5:36. Thursday we took off, Friday we ran 35 min easy and Saturday we ran 6x800 and I was 2:30-30-26-23-25-20. Sunday I ran 50 min steady and Tim took the day off and Matt came back so this brings us current on the training.