Germ Warfare

This week was not a good one for training. I had gotten sick on Tuesday and it really hit hard on Wednesday and tapered off on Thursday. You'd think I would do my best to protect my immune system with having a child in the house who interacts with other kids at school (school = germ factory). So no runs for me. However, I did manage to do most of my CrossFit workouts. I figured that I could go through a very intense workout that CrossFit in a short time versus doing a run that would tax my system at a "lower intensity", but for a longer period. Although, the ideal workout day would have been to CrossFit during my lunchtime and then run in the evening a few hours later. Anyway, here's what I did workout wise:

Tuesday: 500 meter row @ work. Damper set to 5, completed in 2:02 (focused on form)
Wednesday: Sick at home, but managed push-press DB workout. 33 lbs dumbbells, chipper workout of 15/12/9. Focused on form, not time.
Thursday: Still sick at home, but feeling better. No rowing machine, so substituted 500 meter row with 50 Sumo Dead-Lift High Pulls using 33 lbs DB's. This took some time after the first 25. Unbelievably sore afterwards!
Friday: Returned to work, but opted to rest this time instead of doing squat workout.

And we get to today...



I wanted to go long and easy. So the prescription was a 2-hour run (8 miles), trying to stay at or below my Aerobic Threshold of 138 bpm as best as I could. As you can see in the image, most of the HR spots that go above th 138 bpm point are usually hanging around 140-141 bpm, so I'm doing better with handling my HR outside of a treadmill environment, but I need to stick with it and tighten up the zones even more.

Another thing that I noticed is that after an hour of running, my EPOC gradually declined as I continued to run around the same HR. It looks awfully familiar to previous sessions where my EPOC dropped during a long workout. However, the curvature of the drop is alot more easy than before. Doing some research on this (pretty tough since alot of the info was white papers) and remembering various things from my calculus classes back in the day, I believe that what should happen when I continue to run at the same HR zone, the curve will start to flaten out. The 10-minute warm-up that I did will not rise into the Level 2 area for the Training Effect and the EPOC peak will land in the lower points of the Level 2 area of the TE, like a 2.2-2.4 if things progress well and there are no setbacks.

But basically, I ran 8 miles (old running route) in under the 2-hr time and I was able to keep my HR avg in the 136-137 bpm area, so I'd say I didn't do badly this run.

Tomorrow, I get to re-learn what it's like to be on tired legs. 3 hours, same workout intensity. I'm eager to know what the numbers say! Update: Didn't happen. Did alot of walking while running errands, but that's it!