Hello My Name Is: Blog

Let me introduce you to this pretty nifty format for sharing information. It’s called a blog. Not to be confused with a vlog, a newsletter, a podcast, a tweet or a tick-tock (is that even a noun?), a blog is less formal than an article but more permanent than a snapchat or Instagram story. Back in the day, training blogs were all the rage in the world of ultrarunning. As social media took hold of our lives, most of us let our blogs fall by the wayside in favor of the 120 word format and a pretty picture. Well no more. I am resurrecting the training blog in 2022.

After almost three years away from competitive training and racing (one year of injury and rehab, one year of growing and birthing a baby during a global pandemic, and one year of figuring out how to function in my postpartum body) I am starting my athletic journey from complete scratch and thought it would be fun to document the process. I went through years of training and racing during which I made loads of mistakes but somewhere along the way became an elite road, trail and ultra runner. I got within three minutes of qualifying for Olympic marathon trials, I placed top ten at CCC, one of the most competitive 100K mountain races in the world, and I even got to represent my country at the World Trail Running Championship. But after three years away from all of it, I am a beginner once again.

I’m not kidding when I say I started completely over. It took me months to learn how to even walk 20 minutes without pain. I eventually was able to start run-walk intervals every other day which progressed painstakingly slowly. After four months of intervals, I ran for 25 minutes straight on Thanksgiving of last year. Since then, I have been slowly progressing and am up to four days of running a week with two days of cross-training and graduated from recovery to base-building last week. I hope to return to the world of elite racing, but for now, I am truly taking it week by week and enjoying the process of reacquainting myself with structured training.

I decided to resurrect the old training blog because I’ve never been here before and I thought it would be fun to capture my training as I work towards my goal. I plan to share a weekly training summary, key takeaways, and fun things like songs, recipes or gear that stood out that week. I don’t expect these rundowns to be super long-format but there might be instances where I go down the rabbit hole on something. You can subscribe below to make sure you never miss an update and/or follow me on Strava for all the details of my training.

Photo from Saturday’s long run by coach Mario

Base Building: Week 1

Training Time: 8 hours

Run: 21 Miles / 2,500 ft.

Ride: 41 Miles / 1,600 ft.

Lift: 3 sessions / 2 hours

The goal this week was just to get back into the swing of things. For now, I am making my own training plans, though I did get coach to look it over. I am taking a super conservative approach and sticking closely to the 10% increase a week rule until I have a better idea of how my body is handling the load. My formula for now is four days of running a week, two days of cycling, three strength sessions (more on that in a later post), and a complete rest day. My weekday runs have no agenda other than to get it done and feel good during and after. I do still get flare ups in my adductor and pelvis so I am carefully managing effort and volume to slowly build capacity. I did sneak in 4 x 1 min hill repeats on Thursday to spice things up a bit. I didn’t have a target number but rather would stop when form started to break down. Four was that limit for me this week. Me of three years ago would have been comparing against me at my fittest and would feel disappointed but me of 2022 was super excited to do those four since a month ago that wouldn’t have been possible.

All in all, it was a solid week of training. Nothing objectively outstanding happened but I am finishing today (Sunday) with tired legs and no pain so I call that a huge win.

The recipe that totally rocked my world this week was Korean Inspired Tacos from Half-baked Harvest. Leftovers for lunch today after my long ride really hit the spot.

Aila also started actually saying “Mama” to me today and I swear my heart grew when she tapped me on the shoulder and I heard her little voice.

I don’t know if anyone actually made it this far, but wishing happy and healthy training to everyone!