Training to circumnavigate a volcano — Back after a beat down from COVID

A wrap up of my week thirteen training for an August 50K race

Where have I been?

My last training post was one month ago and I was just hitting my stride and gearing up for a peak of five weeks before two weeks of tapering for the race. Well COVID had another idea 😀 My family and I are very lucky, we had mild cases, but between passing it around and my body recovering I lost out on quite a bit of training. Weeks ten and eleven consisted of minimal to no training and week twelve was spent getting my feet back under me. Last week, week thirteen I was ready to get back to it.

Week Thirteen

My watch has been having some syncing issues so I don't have the pretty data to show for last week yet, here's a quick run down of what I managed as I tried to get back into it full force

🧘‍♂️ Wednesday — Had a good morning stretch and core workout and finished off with a 2 mile run. Felt good to get out, but my legs are out of shape.

🏃 Thursday — Headed out for an hour before work. Longest run for a couple weeks and after the initial mile of working out the kinks it felt great to get back into the flow

🧘‍♂️ Friday — Carbon copy of Wednesday. I felt much better on the short jog after stretching out compared to Wednesday. Starting to feel a bit like a runner again.

⛰️ Saturday — First long run was tough. My stamina isn't fully back yet. I managed a three hour run, but the last 30 minutes was a drag. It was a humid day which didn't help, but my legs fell flat the last few miles. I managed 16 miles so it wasn't nothing

☕ Sunday — Played some sand volleyball for two hours instead of running and did a one hour paddle on the water in the afternoon. I felt some of the tiredness from the long run during both activities and it was apparent that the tank doesn't fill quite back to 100% yet.

On to Week Fourteen

As I write this post race day is only 26 days a way. COVID was a major hurdle to cross, but now that I have passed that challenge I plan on using these next 26 days to get me to the starting line healthy and ready to run a comfortable race. It will not be as fast as I had hoped, but the base training I have been putting in since April hasn't completely vanished. With some hard work over the next three weeks I will still be able to finish the race without being completely torn up. My goal the next two weeks is to build back some lost endurance and not hurt myself along the way.

The small silver lining in this scenario is that I essentially had two weeks off my feet. It wasn't ideal repair time as my body was busy fighting off a virus, but my legs did have some time to relax.