World Vision Training - 6 weeks to go

For most of the marathons I’ve raced, six weeks before the race is about the time I start wishing that the marathon was here already. At that point, I’ve trained 10 - 14 weeks and I just want to be done training and run the race.

Not this year. This year, if you’ve followed my blog, you know that I dealt with a lot of foot injuries over the past year. Although I seem to have recovered from the injuries, I haven’t done the training I would have liked, and instead of wishing the race were here, I wish I had a few more weeks to train.

Though I wish I had more time to train, things have been going well. The sore ankle that I was worried about has cleared up completely, and I haven’t had any pain from my previous foot injuries in over a month. The only thing giving me a little trouble is a sore quad, but it doesn’t bother me much when I run, and I’m hopeful it won’t be an issue on race day.

I had some positive happenings in my running last week including a solid interval workout, a season best time in the 5K, and my highest weekly mileage this training cycle. 

In interval workouts, I’m not doing marathon specific work. Instead, I’ve been focusing my workouts for the 5K since one of my goals for the year was to run under 18 minutes, and I’d like to get that done before Twin Cities Marathon. This past week I did a 10 X 500m at a 17:50 5K pace, and I hit every one of my splits. The workout definitely gave me confidence that I can break 18 minutes in the 5K before Twin Cities Marathon. I’ll write more about my 5K training and racing in a future post.

I was glad to get in over 45 miles of training this week, finishing the week with 47 miles. I don’t know how smart it is, but a few times, including last week, I’ve run a warm up for the parkrun 5K, raced the 5K and then put in a bunch more miles to make it my long run. The weather was decent Saturday, and I ran 15 miles and still had some pop in my legs at the end. I ran 6:38 pace for the last couple miles, so my racing the 5K in the first part of my long run didn’t turn out too bad.

So there’s my week. Thanks for reading. If you’re interested in donating to my Team World Vision fundraiser, you can donate through my Facebook fundraising page (I’m matching the next $100 in donations), or you can donate on my Team World Vision fundraising page.

Team World Vision Training - 7 weeks to go

Good news from this week: after taking five days-in-a-row off last week and forgoing a long run for a long hike, I’ve been feeling great. The ankle that had been bothering me didn’t hurt at all last week including during a hard-ish workout, a 5K race and a 12 mile long run.

The workout I did this week was Yasso 800s. If you haven’t heard of them, Yasso 800s, named after runner Bart Yasso, are a marathon predictor workout. Basically, you convert your marathon goal time from hours:minutes to minutes:seconds. Then you run 800m (half mile) at your prescribed pace. For example: if your marathon goal is three hours, you would run each 800 in three minutes. In between 800s you jog an equal amount of time.

I’ve done this workout before and found that it predicts a marathon time of about five minutes faster than I actually run (which isn't unusual). Yasso 800s aren’t necessarily a great workout for marathon training—not that they’re not helpful, but I wouldn’t do them too many times as there are only so many hard workouts one can do before a marathon. For example: long runs with the last 6 - 10 miles at goal marathon pace or tempo runs at slightly faster than race pace are more beneficial for marathon training.

You can read all about the workout here: "The Real History of the Yasso 800s," or simply Google, "Yasso 800s" to read numerous opinions on the workout,

I’m thankful for a good bounce back week of training after spending the previous week with a sore ankle. I’m planning on putting in a few more miles this week and am hoping to keep staying injury-free.

Healthy Habits Update

This month I’ve made the goal of of maintaining two healthy habits — drinking one alcoholic beverage per week or less and eating 36 grams of sugar per day or less. Part of the reason I set this goal was to be more healthy, and part of the reason was that I wanted to get closer to the weight I was when I did my best racing. I’m by no means overweight, but I know I could run faster if I weighed a little less.

The healthy habits have been going OK. I’m doing great with the alcohol one. I’ve only had one drink as of this writing (August 17). The sugar goal is not going so well. I haven’t kept exact track, but I think I’ve been having 36 grams of sugar or less per day between 50% and 60% of the time. It’s definitely a weakness.

So, I want to adjust my goal on the fly here since staying under 36 grams a day hasn’t been that successful. Instead, since I have two weeks of August left, I’m going to limit myself to two sweets a week — four sweets between now and the end of the month. That way I know on the days I want to have a sweet I can save it for something I really want, and the other days I’m not going to be doing the math and figuring out exactly how much sugar I can consume. Instead, I’ll just be having no sweets at all.

How about you? Are you maintaining or starting any healthy habits? I’d love to hear from you.

Team World Vision Training - 8 weeks to go

From my hike on the Minnesota River Bottoms Trail

I had to do a double take when I saw there were only eight weeks left until the Twin Cities Marathon. In the past, when there were four to six weeks left until the marathon, I'd start wishing the race were here already.

This year I have a feeling I'm going to be wishing there were more time to train right up until the marathon.

I feel like I've had some great workouts during long runs, but long runs have been the only type of workout I've done besides doing one short hill workout with the Burnsville Summer Running group. I was hoping that would change this past week but, oh, let me tell you about my training last week.

If you were tuned in for last week's training update, you know my ankle started bothering me. So, this week, I decided I would go against what I normally (and ill-advisedly) do when I get an injury. Instead of running on the injury to the point where I can no longer tolerate the pain, I completely stopped running.

I checked every day to see if my ankle hurt, and it finally felt good on Friday, so I did a four mile run. It was a little sore for a couple hours after the run, but it felt fine on Saturday, so I tried a five mile run. After the five mile run it didn't hurt at all, but I decided to still take Sunday off running and did a ninety minute hike instead.

I probably should have gone for a bike ride last week, but the road next to our cul-de-sac is all torn up, and I haven't felt like trying to navigate it or put my bike on the car rack and ride from somewhere else. Instead, I decided on walking and strength training.

This week ended up to be a very easy recovery week. I hope I didn't lose too much fitness, but at the least I didn't gain any weight, so that's a positive.

Fact this week:

133 million people suffer from intestinal helminths (ascariasis, trichuriasis and hookworm infection) caused by unsafe drinking water.

You can help provide live-giving water to communities without basic access to clean water. A donation of $50 brings clean water to one person, but a donation of any amount helps.

Check out my fundraising page: Nathan Leckband - World Vision, or you can donate through my Facebook fundraiser: Nathan’s Fundraiser.

Team World Vision Training - 9 weeks to go

It was a mixed bag of training for Twin Cities Marathon this week. I logged just over 40 miles, and the week went well up until the end of my run on Thursday.

After my feet had both slowly healed the past couple years, this week I suffered a setback. During a 13 mile run on Thursday, the front of my right ankle started hurting. It wasn’t bad, and it didn’t slow me down — more of an annoyance than an injury. Still, it was tender after the run, so I decided to take a couple days to rest it and hopefully let it heal.

Then, I did something dumb. After taking Friday and Saturday off, my ankle was feeling decent. It wasn’t 100% better, but at least 80%. Here’s where I made a rookie (or should be rookie) mistake. I headed out on what I figured would be a 4 - 5 mile run, but at the three mile mark my ankle was fine, so I decided to make it an eight mile run.

Of course, five miles in my ankle started hurting again, and afterward it was feeling pretty sore. This morning it feels a little better, so I’m hoping after a few days off it clears up and I’m back running pain-free. Being who I am and always thinking of “what-ifs,” I’m seeing a couple of ways this could go:

1. Best Case Scenerio: The ankle clears up after 3 - 4 days, and I’m back to normal running.

2. OK Scenerio: The ankle hurts longer and I have to wait until it feels good enough to run, and after running limited mileage it clears up.

3. Not So Great Scenerio: The ankle keeps hurting too much to run, and I have to go in and get it looked at. I get good news and get back to running in a short amount of time.

4. Worst Scenerio: I go in to get the ankle looked at, and I get bad news, and I have to take a good amount of time off and either have to run/walk the marathon or have to miss it altogether.

So that’s the running front. On the fundraising for Team World Wision front, things are going much better. I’m getting close to my goal of $50 per mile, and have been blown away by the generosity of friends and family. I’m just over $200 from meeting my goal and am optimistic about meeting that goal before the marathon.

Fact this week:

841 million people are without basic water access. This includes people who are traveling more than 30 minutes to access water and people without access to clean water.

You can help provide live-giving water to communities without basic access to clean water. A donation of $50 brings clean water to one person, but a donation of any amount helps.

Check out my fundraising page: Nathan Leckband - World Vision, or you can donate through my Facebook fundraiser: Nathan’s Fundraiser.

August Healthy Habit

I’ve done this for a few years now — starting a healthy habit in August. In the past, I’ve asked readers to join me in cutting down on sugar consumption or starting or maintaining their own healthy habit.

While being injured for the better part of two years, the decreased running combined with eating out of boredom has led to me gaining around ten pounds. In a future post I’ll be writing about what I’ve started to try and get the weight off, but that isn’t going to be my healthy habit. Instead, I’m planning on starting two. First, I’m going to have a mostly alcohol-free August. Instead of drinking at home on a semi- (OK, more than semi) regular basis, I’m going to save imbibing once-a-week or less. This will mean I’ll have to plan ahead to when I have occasions where I may want to drink, and abstaining at other occasions where drinking is occurring. At the end of the month, I want to say I’ve had four drinks or fewer.

My other healthy habit will be to limit sugar to less than 36 grams per day on average. On its face, this healthy habit looks easy — just don’t eat sweets. When I’ve done this in the past, however, there are lots of ways sugar can end up in my diet: cereal, yogurt, BBQ sauce. So, it’s not just avoiding sweets. It’s also being mindful of ingredients and portion sizes.

So there are my healthy habits. I’m committed to them for the month of August and am hoping to be feeling healthier coming into September when my marathon training will be at it’s most intense.

What about you? Any healthy habits you want to continue or start in August? I’d love to hear from you.