Photo courtesy of Andrew King - D4 Productions

Sunday, January 9, 2011

January 3-9, 2010

Second full of week of training and I'm well on my way to a good year... Yeah only two weeks in but I feel great. I've run every day since Christmas and each day I look forward to getting out. I feel strong, healthy, and revived after a short hiatus through November and December. At 41 I'll take healthy and strong all day long! My approach to training has changed a bit this year with Lucho as my co-pilot, HR training early in the year is teaching me something that I have overlooked in years past. I'm building to Western States right now and building means a good base and NOT peaking too early. Most of my runs for the last week has been very mellow keeping the HR between 135-155. It's much harder to keep the HR above 135 on the downhills and serves as a good reminder to not get complacent. In addition, I have been doing core training such as: one legged jump rope, crunches, band resistant workouts with the legs, and jack knifes. It's all been good and a refreshed approach. I know the coming weeks will have me begging for mercy with some leg turnover stuff but for now it's building the endurance and taking the right nutrition in. Here's what this week looked like:


82.73 myles
12.13 hours
13,622 ft of climbing

On another note, my Utah Mexican friend sent me this picture. Apparently he has taken my place as this top honor. Congrats Mi Amigo!



4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Scott,
any protocol for one leg jump rope? number of jumps or time with each leg and sets?...
Thanks,
Girona.

Unknown said...

Hey Girona -

I've had calf issues in the past so I do these exercises right after a run. Last week I did 2 days, each day 3 x 10 reps for each leg. It's not much but the message is to gradually build up to around 7 minutes for each leg.

Lucho said...

The single leg jump rope is part drill part strength work. When you are doing them your foot plant is close to the ideal for running, mid to flat foot. Plus your upper body must remain perfectly balanced over your hips. The strength part comes from landing (absorbing your body weight) and then exploding back up for the next hop. If you do 10 hops you might not be impressed, but once your achilles and soleus have adapted and you build slowly up in to the 2-3:00 range it becomes quite difficult. Scott's 7:00 'goal' is what I have built to in the past. It is critical to start very conservative so the next day you don't have any soreness. Even small micro tears can develop in to full blown achilles tendonitis when you pile on running mileage around the jumps.

Anonymous said...

I have a considerable leg strength imbalance that greatly increases when running high mileage. I will start in that routine right away, if I can get both legs to work at the same horse power my over all fitness, economy of running and resistance to injury are going to sky rocket. Thanks to both for answering and I am open to more suggestions that you might have.
Girona