156 LostTrailRunner Podcast

Music.

Finally back with another podcast. This is episode 156 of The Lost Trail Runner. I hope you enjoy it. Music. It's time for me to get back into podcasting again Again, I'm sorry for the delay. In the middle of June, I guess it was the middle of June, I came down with COVID. And I didn't really recover very good until about the middle of July. I missed Peachtree. You already know that because I've gone through that in my previous podcast.

But then, as I started to recover, I started up like a 5K training program, but since I was running so slow, I figured I'd just do it on the trail, like out at Stone Mountain and various places like that. But so I was doing that, and I was starting to pick up steam and feel good when I crossed the covered bridge at Stone Mountain on the Indian Island and tripped on a root or a rock, I don't know which, and tore up both knees, my right palm and thumb, and my forehead.

And that was on a Sunday afternoon. noon and I went home and I thought, well, I'll just take care of this myself. Well, I finally gave up Monday morning and went to the ER and they patched everything up and gave me a CT scan to see if I still had a brain. They said, yeah, it's still there. And I asked them if it was very big, and they didn't answer. So I don't know. But anyway, so I ended up walking for a couple of weeks.

And then I just kind of got uninspired, and I missed basically a whole week and a half just doing basically nothing. So I figure that's my recovery weeks there.

And now I have just restarted another 5k training plan and today this is September 3rd is my first official day of running in that training plan and it's only like 32 minutes 30 minutes you know stuff like that long runs about 40 right now and I'm gonna stick with that as good as I can and then I will work from there going forward and all this is going to be on pavement I've come to the conclusion that for now since I did such a bad job of running on the

trail that when I go on a trail I'm just going to be walking for now until I get my trail running confidence back and can run on the trail some more. But the 5K plan I'm doing is just going to be strictly pavement. I'll be running at Mountain Park Park, which is where I'm at today on the 3rd of September. I ran a 32-minute run.

It's a Zone 2 program, which fits right in with with the Galloway timer run-walk program because I can stay right in zone two, doing like a 15-30 once I have a five-minute warmup and then the rest of the run is in zone two. And also, that is also basically my MAF zone. So it's kind of like I've got a combination of Zone 2 training, MAF runs, and Galloway all thrown together. And it seems like it'll work out pretty good if I'm consistent.

And that's what I've got to get back to. After taking a week and a half off, it's real easy to just sit down and go, well, I don't really feel like running today. Maybe I'll just do it tomorrow. And I want to get out of that mode. So this whole week is, actually it's six days. Yesterday was the very first day of the training program, but it was a rest day. And I did go out and run a little over 30 minutes easy. So two miles ahead. head.

Most of these runs are going to be probably between two and three miles, and maybe the long runs might be up to four. I don't know. So today, I went to Mountain Park. That's where I'm at right now, sitting in my car, and I just ran out 16 minutes and turned around and came back using my Zone 2 heart rate after the first five minutes. So I got in a little over two miles, maybe 2.1 miles. It wasn't very fast. I mean, we're hitting right close to 15-minute pace, which is pretty slow.

But it'll pick up once I get going. And I noticed on Training Peaks, which I use, before I got COVID, I was up in, they have one.

Metric that i guess it's to show what kind of condition you're in and i was up to i was up to 38 heading towards 40 and now i'm back down to 20 so i gotta build back up and and i gotta i gotta look and see what is a good number for being in shape in training peaks i i don't know what that That number is, I know that being at a 38 probably is below good, you know, good training running shape, like for running in races and stuff like that.

So I'm going to have to check into that and I'll let you know how good I'm doing or how bad I'm doing on that. So today was a fairly decent run. The temperature was in the low 80s, which is like a cool wave here in Georgia. It's been like in 94, 95, 93. Of course, I haven't been doing much in those temperatures. So I guess in that respect, I didn't really have to suffer much because I wasn't really training.

But today it was according to my apple watch right now it's 82 degrees which is decent and there's a breeze blowing so i didn't feel like i got overheated or anything so what i'm going to do is this is going to be i'm going to go back to like at the first of the year when i started, podcasting regular i was doing like daily updates and putting them all together for a podcast and i I guess that's what I'm going to do going forward if I can stick with it.

So this is the end of my first update, so I guess I'll see you tomorrow. Music. It's Wednesday, the 4th of September, and I just completed a half mile. Why did I say a half mile? A half hour run, which was a little over two miles, 2.1, I guess. I was mostly in zone two after the first five minutes. It was a fairly good run. I ran at Lilburn Park today. Yesterday I ran at Mountain Park, and I switched shoes. I ran in my Triumph 21s, Saucony Triumph 21s.

And I don't run in those shoes very much. I don't know why. They're a very cushiony shoe, but they have a higher heel lift than I'm comfortable with, I think. I usually run in a shoe that's either four or five millimeter drop or possibly a zero drop. And these are probably eight or ten millimeter. But, I mean, I had a good run, but I just really, I'm not into the drop thing.

Too high a drop for me, I guess. So I guess tomorrow I'll switch to another pair of shoes that doesn't have that high of a drop on them. You know what I'm talking about, drop, right? The forefoot is lower by 8 millimeters than the heel. And I ran a little bit faster today. I mostly, I did, I started out with my Galloway timer for the first five minutes. But I was trying to get, I have the first five minutes as a warm-up. And I have my watch set on 99 to 111, I think it is, heart rate.

So I try to get in that range. And once I get in that range, then I'll switch off the Galloway timer and run heart rate run and walk. So the first five minutes I did 99 to 111. And then for the next 25 minutes, I ran 111 to 121, maybe in that range. And that gave me overall pace of about a 14 and a half maybe, which is slow, but for me it's fine. And trying to come back from my various injuries and stuff, it's really okay.

So tomorrow I got another short Zone 2 run and I'll give you the update on that tomorrow. So I'll see you later. Music.

Today's September 5th and I went over to Mountain Park this afternoon about 5, 5.30. ran a 30 minute zone 2 run, It was a pretty good run. I just got some Hoka Mach 6s, and it was my first run of no shoes. And I don't know if they're that much better than the other shoes I've got, but I ran at a lower heart rate today and a little bit faster, which is a good sign.

I mean, we're not talking super fast. I mean, we're only talking like, I think I averaged 14.03 for 30 minutes, and that's good for me. And my heart rate was only about like a 108 average, which is pretty low. So I thought that meant that I'm doing a little bit better. I don't think you can see improvement that quick being only about my third or fourth run in this training plan. But it was still encouraging to see that my speed was a little bit faster to lower heart rate.

And we'll see how it works out tomorrow because I've got another half hour run tomorrow, which is Friday. And then I think I have one on Saturday. And I think Sunday I've got a 40-minute run. so we'll see how it goes. So far, it's encouraging, and I haven't tripped and fallen down and torn any knees up or anything, so things are going good. Of course, I'm running on pavement now, not on trails.

Well, at Mountain Park, there is a little bit of a trail in the back side of the park over there that I run. It's probably maybe a quarter mile, maybe a little bit longer. That's a trail back in the woods but nothing to speak of no roots to trip over, and i had a pretty good run so we'll see how it goes tomorrow i'll talk to you later so. Music.

Today's Saturday the 6th of September, and I just finished a half hour run at Bethesda Park. And it's another slow run. I'm doing a lot of slow runs. Trying to build my base back up since I've been messed up for so long here. Anyway, I have no urgency to actually get faster at the moment. It except any speed that I pick up naturally from getting in better shape, which is all I want to do right now.

And once I get in that situation, then I'll worry about switching over to doing, some fartlek runs and maybe some intervals and things like that to go in with my easy runs.

But for now, I'm just sticking with the easy ones and I'm enjoying myself and I'm staying up right and that's a good sign and it's another day it's about I guess in the mid 80s sun's out not too humid it's a comfortable day to run unlike I guess we're over summer now but not quite fall and I took off yesterday I I thought since this plan is a six day a week plan and I ran on Monday which was supposed to be the rest day that I would switch that rest day to Friday so I didn't run yesterday I just.

Today off. So today was a half hour run and tomorrow I believe is 40 minutes. So I ought to come out with about, I don't know, probably about 14 miles for the week, which isn't too bad doing slow runs, just staying under. I'm pretty much just staying under 15 minute pace between 14 and 15 minutes. Some of the, some of the miles have been in the third thirteens, but when you You average them all out over the run. It ends up being a 14-something.

I think my fastest day, I averaged like a 14.03 average. And I think one of my middle mile of the two mile, well, there isn't any middle mile of a two mile run, is there? The second mile of my two mile run might have been under 14 minutes, 13-something. So I got close to a 14-minute average.

So hopefully I can keep this up and I don't think I'll burn out doing these short runs like this I think in a couple of weeks it moves up to my base run to be 35 minutes instead of 30 and I think it goes up to 40 it creeps up a little bit so I'll be looking forward to getting in better shape and picking up my pace and then maybe I can start training for a race we'll see I mean if If it works out right, it'll probably come out about right, because I've always liked to race like

October, November, December. I've always liked to race during that period of time when it's a little cooler out, but not in the dead of winter yet. So we'll see what happens. I'll talk to you tomorrow. Bye. Music.

Okay, I need to catch up. Today's September 11th, and I didn't record my run on the 8th, or on the 9th, as a matter of fact.

So let me go back I went over to Lions Club Park in Lowburn that's a park that's got a loop trail it's probably maybe seven tenths and then it also connects to the Greenway Trail which I run on quite frequently so I started out on the loop at Lions Club and went and hit the Greenway and did an out and back got my 40 minute long run in that day it was a nice day and i just chugged along doing zone two mostly using when i start out what i i do is i have a five minute warm-up

session and and i use my galloway timer i have it set on 30 second walk 16 second run and I warm up using that. And then once that five minutes is over and I go into my regular workout, then I switch over to heart rate and run. 111 beats per minute is my lower limit and And 123 is my high. So I stay in that range. So I'm basically running and walking based on my heart rate instead of my Galloway timer.

So if I run up to 123, then I'll walk until I get down to about a 113, 114 and start running again. Because I don't like to go down. If I get too far, if I get down to 111, by the time I start running again, I'll be below that heart rate zone and then I got to catch back up again. So I try to keep it in that zone and my Garmin, at the end of the run, it gives you like percentage of the time that you are actually in your workout zone.

So I think on Sunday it said I was in my zone like 72% of my workout, which is fairly decent. And I had a good run. I mean, we're not talking fast. I think I averaged around 14.10 a mile, something like that. Ran a little less than three miles in 40 minutes. I felt good. And then Monday, I went over to J.B. Williams Park. That's not too far from where I live. And they have a it's basically park that has like softball fields or baseball fields in it.

And it's got a couple of dog walking parks in it, you know, like for small dogs and big dogs. And it is about, I think the way I run it, it's not quite a mile loop. I kind of run a figure eight pattern on that to get the most distance out of that trail in that park. So I ran my normal 30-minute run Monday. Sunday and I ran a little bit slower than I ran for my longer run on Sunday. But the difference is the elevation.

My run on Sunday, the elevation of the run as far as up and down is not very much, just at the very start. And that's about it. Where at J.B. Williams doing that loop, I think in a little over two miles, I got close to 200 feet of elevation gain. So that also made my pace slower because of my heart rate would go up higher at a slower pace. So, but anyway, it was still a good workout. And then on Tuesday, which was yesterday, Yesterday, I took my day off for the week.

The plan that I'm using, the 80-20 plan of, I think it's Matt Fitzgerald's plan. Has a rest day on Monday. But what I've been doing is I move that rest day around based on how I'm feeling at the time. Like Monday, I was feeling like, let's go run. So I went out and ran. Yesterday, I wasn't in that good of a mood for running. So I just said, okay, Tuesday's my day off this week, which means I've got to run the rest of the week because it's a six-day-a-week training plan.

So today I've got a 30-minute run, and I think probably tomorrow's a 30, and then Friday's 38, or no, Friday's 32 minutes, Saturday is 38 minutes, and Sunday's 50 minutes.

And the only catch to that is tomorrow and the next day are supposed to be rainy days and if it's not a storm where there's thunder and lightning I kind of like running in the rain if it's not a torrential downpour if it's just you know drizzling or just raining nice I like kind of running in the rain because it cools you off and it's comfortable. But if it's thundering and lightning, you can figure that I'm out of there. I'm not doing that.

I just don't like to be running when there's lightning around. So we'll see how the rest of the week plays out after today. Today is the last good day of the week, I think, as far as weather. And today's kind of overcast, and it's a little bit cooler. It's like maybe 80 degrees. And then tomorrow it's going to be probably, if it's raining tomorrow, let's look at the forecast here. Here, I'll pull up my weather app and see what it says.

Okay, daily, it's showing today the high is supposed to be 81, and it is supposed to rain today some. Let's see if it shows when it's supposed to rain today. Hourly, it looks like 5 or 6 o'clock. to say evening it's supposed to rain, but not very much, just a little bit right at six o'clock. So I can get my half hour in before that. And let's see what the next day, Thursday, Thursday, rain 51% at nine o'clock. Yeah, the high is only supposed to be about 72 at 4 in the afternoon that day.

And it looks like most of the rain is going to be in the morning on Thursday. So maybe I can run in the afternoon and not get wet. And let's see. So, yeah, the high Thursday is supposed to be 72. The high Friday is supposed to be 72. But it looks like Friday, the weather might be a little bit touchier. It shows thunder and lightning. Let's see, from noon until about 2 o'clock, it's going to be thunder and lightning.

And then around 3, it looks like it clears up and then comes back in at 6 o'clock in the evening. So, it looks like I've got a window on Friday that I'll be able to run okay. So, and then Saturday, the temperature starts going back up. It's going to be a high of 74, and then Sunday's going to be 81. So, it looks to me like I should be able to slide on through this week without skipping a run because of lightning, hopefully.

Hopefully anyway kind of went off on a tangent on the weather there but trying to plan ahead for my running and what times of the day I'm going to do it so I will talk to you again, maybe this afternoon I don't know because right now it's probably about 2 30 and I haven't run and I'll probably run later on. So if I do, I'll try to record, let you know if I got rained on or not. Okay. See ya. Music.

I'll tell you one thing, it's hard to get back into the loop of running consistently, after you've taken off for a while, at least for me it is. I thought I was going real good last week at the first of the week, and then all of a sudden I took off Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday and Saturday.

I finally ran on Sunday for about 56 minutes, and then yesterday was Monday, and the training plan that I'm on, Mondays is an off day, and I had planned on running my off day and moving the off day to another day of the week.

But I didn't run Monday so I took my off day already so I've got to run the rest of the week and that's going to be a chore unless I get in the groove and really start running again I. Got in 32 minutes today and I felt pretty good after about 10 minutes the first 10 minutes I was like felt like stiff as a board my legs wouldn't move or any of that stuff but finally I got going and I felt better and hopefully I can continue for the rest of the week I mean I really don't have

any long or hard runs I mean they're all easy so I ought to just be able to get out the door and do them what happened last week is we had a couple of days that it was rainy and that just kind of got me out of the mood I shouldn't I really haven't got a problem with running in rain if there's no thunder and lightning, but I just for some reason watched football and screwed around and pretty soon the day was gone and I said well I'll just do it tomorrow and then I didn't do it the next.

Finally, Sunday, I did get out and get some miles in. Not many, but I got 56 minutes. I'm running by minutes right now. I'm not worried too much about my mileage. So today was 32, and tomorrow will be 30. Actually, tomorrow was going to be my day off for the week instead of Monday, But since I took Monday off, I'm going to do my run that I would have done on Monday tomorrow. So I won't have missed any days this week if I continue for the rest of the week with my plan like I'm supposed to.

And really, I don't have any races planned, so it's not like I have any pressure. I just, it's a matter of discipline, you know, being able to go out and do it. Because I've been doing it since 1972. So, I mean, this past couple of months, after I had COVID and then I tripped and fell on the trail, it just kind of screwed up my whole pattern, and I'm having to come back from all that. And I can do it. It's just a matter of bearing down and getting it done.

So, we'll see what happens tomorrow. Anyway, this should be my last recording for this podcast.

I'm going to put this on a podcast and get this out and then start over. Okay, so we'll see you later. Music. Hey, thanks for listening to today's podcast. We'll be here next time. Keep the emails coming in and be sure to subscribe. Music. Bye.