July 2013 – end of month running report

My “roadrunner” month. The heat index averaged just over 80 °F with most of my runs starting around 7:30am. I had one silly run in the middle of the day through a muddy trail when the heat index topped off at 94 °F – that wasn’t my best moment, but it was oddly meditative. I gather, when you’re that miserable, your mind knows how to automatically shift its focus.

July’s run schedule was a little bit tricky, because I didn’t have much room to reorganize my runs. The goal was to log 10 runs under 8:00min/mi – mind you, some people would find this laughable while others would think it’s the shizzle. I am, of course, in that latter group. Yeah!

Basically, each hard run was followed by 2 days of rest. It’s pretty much every third day and I might have done one with only one day apart. Oh, and I still had to hit my 100mi monthly mileage. It was great for discipline because, I had to show up regardless of the heat index. Not so great for performance on some days.

In the end, I re-evaluated my decision to postpone another Cooper Test until it’s cooler and ran another one at 6:51am this morning. The result was almost the exact same distance and speed, but the absolute improvement translated to 2 steps up in my estimated VO2max. Pret-ty awesome, if you ask me.

What worked:

• Nearly all of my runs were in the morning. Psychologically, I think lower perceived effort in the AM.
• Speed development is super fun. The 1 mile cut off is also nice when it’s crazy hot out.
• Tracking HRR made me very mindful of my recovery periods and helped me avoid overtraining.
• Core workouts. Not a single knee, leg, shin, or back problem this whole month. Woohoo!

What didn’t work:

• Trying to track my resting HR first thing in the morning. It was too easy to forget. Trying again.
• Getting a consistent HRR reading. Just gotta remember to do the same thing each time after every workout!
• Running drills on the road. Just isn’t very easy to do, logistically speaking, but super easy on a track.
• Tough to get more sleep in when there are visitors (and old friends) in town. I need a re-do.

Of course, yet another crazy month for Smashrun with lots of redesigns and two new features. We also broke through some login and new registration records this month! Active users are up! Dedicated users are up! User feedback is still quite lovely. It helps that we really like our users too. Chris is a happy camper.

An example of a trailing 265 day mileage chart.

Chris worked on the trailing mileage charts while I designed and figured out the weekly running (and non-running) reports. I’m a big fan of the Feltron Report and it always bugged me that everyone’s weekly running reports were so plain when it just didn’t require that much effort to dress it up a little. So I dressed that email report like it was going to a Quantified Self conference, but less dorky and a touch of bacon (we added a “bacon option” for our calorie equivalents).

Smashrun’s weekly running report.

Hoping to blog a bit about Lift this month and about my efforts to make it a place to help others become better, more well-rounded, runners. Hopefully, I can squeeze in a few entries as well about my recent cooking shenanigans, my killer veggie burgers, and a new porter on the way!

Should August cooperate, I’d like to pick up my usual long trail runs next month, continue tracking my HRR, add RHR, and do running drills early morning before my usual runs.