Today’s exercise consisted of two separate activities.
First up I needed to complete the next Run in the Zwift Running 101 series. The expiry timer has been slowly ticking down on me, and today was my last day.
Still two runs left in that series.
I’m enjoying it, but when mixed with cycling I’m finding it difficult to find the time to do both.
I definitely find the running much harder than cycling.
I’ve realised that the way my right foot is landing is at a very odd angle, so am conscious of trying to correct that on each “step” forward.
Aside from that, today’s run was recovery so nothing too intense. Even so, I found it much harder on my body than an equivalent recovery cycling workout.
As ever, I kinda just totally disregarded the stated speeds suggested by Zwift and ran at a pace that put the coloured graph lines at the bottom of the screen into the zones that were displayed in the top left.
I’ve noticed the treadmill says the speed I’m running at is slightly faster than what Zwift reports, but not by much.
One thing that is a pain in the ass is having to swap the fan over between rooms when running and riding. So much so that today I ran without the fan. That wasn’t fun.
There’s a couple of recurring problems I’m finding when running.
One is that I almost always feel my shoe rubbing. This is always my right shoe, right on the heel. I suspect that’s related to the angle my foot is landing at naturally. I’ve tried tightening my laces but that doesn’t seem to have any impact.
The other thing is that my calves and knees are just not a fan of running. I found running slower today to be more difficult than the fast mile run when it came to landing on my toes rather than more flat on my heels. Maybe that’s normal at a slower pace.
In order to complete the training plan I have yet another run to complete tomorrow.
After the run today I felt the urge to get on the bike and spin our my legs.
This turned into quite a long ride, as covered below. But I can’t see myself doing that again tomorrow. And I have to run tomorrow to meet the training plan schedule.
In summary I’m definitely enjoying the running plan much more than I expected.
I’m also a better runner, in terms of fitness (only) than I expected to be. I’m fairly confident I could run 5k without stopping, though the pace wouldn’t be fantastic.
I put that down to all the cycling, of course.
Im finding it hard to do both cycling and running each week, and in many ways wish I could do the running workouts individually. I’m not sure I’d sign up for another training plan after this. I think it’s great so long as you’re only running each week.
But would have I stuck with it had I not had the rigid schedule to stick too? Who knows.
As above, after the run I really felt the need to spin out my legs.
After yesterday’s hard attacking climb, I felt comfortable doing an easy recovery ride. My plan was to stick around 160w.
Didn’t happen.
As per usual I found myself going harder, though when I noticed I was I really tried my best to ease off the throttle and slow it down again.
I’d picked a route that was largely countryside, and quite crucially, flat.
Unfortunately as I got out into the sticks, firstly the route tried to take me up some Manor house private driveway. That involved a bit of a detour, up a fairly steep hut short slope. No big deal.
Back on track, I came to a road that was closed for essential road works. The detour was through Brock Bottoms, which is a bit of a grinding climb and one that I’d deliberately avoided when planning the route.
There were a couple of hairy moments. One involving oncoming traffic as I was granny gearing my way up the steepest part of the climb. And the other being skidding under my wheels as I tried accelerate on the wet roads. Scary stuff.
I was glad to clear that section.
As it was the ride turned out to be more intense than intended. Combined, the two workouts put me at about a thousand calories of work.
As soon as I got back I went fairly deep into that deficit with a pie, an ice cream, and a beer. Hey, if is a Saturday.
So who knows what I’ll do tomorrow. A run is forced upon me, but will I head out or do a Zwift session? I honestly don’t know at this point.
