Had to take four rest days in a row this week because my plantar fasciitis was bugging me a lot and I wanted to get it under control with stretches, massage and strengthening exercises. It’s annoying, particularly because I have an ultra coming up in six weeks and don’t really want to reduce my load this much at this point. Going to see a chiropractor for the first time tomorrow to see if they can help.

On Tuesday I’m going to an athletics club running group to try out what running in company is like. I usually enjoy solitary runs, but I think I might benefit from some coaching, so I’m giving the club a try.

Really enjoyed watching UTMB coverage this weekend!

Great goal! It sounds like you’re doing everything right. You’ll get there. Even if setbacks are frustrating, I’m convinced they are part of a necessary learning process to get to ultra distances.

You’ll probably take smaller steps which will slow you down until you learn to up your cadence (= step frequency).

Scott Jurek somewhere likens running to a controlled forward fall. Having that in my head as a sort of “mantra” really helps me stay in the correct form.

I ran 60km over five sessions last week in hopes of starting vacation in the mountains next week fit and ready to do some trail running. I started varying between regular running shoes, racing flats and sandals, and I’m enjoying how it different runs seem to activate different muscles.

I know several people in Germany who are regular Komoot users.

Rubbing vaseline all over your feet, including between your toes, can help avoid blistering when feet get wet. I also noticed that when wearing compression socks, blistering is basically never an issue (but those don’t make sense for everyone).

Running harder than ever for this kind of workout, I just completed 6×2km intervals.

Garmin: “No anaerobic benefit.”

This was so incredibly engrossing and exciting – I wound up following the coverage of this for far longer than I thought I would, in part because there just was way more live coverage than I expected, but also because the race was still contested past mile 85. The second and third finisher hit the track for the final 300m at the same time!

Running intervals can pay off really quickly. I thought I’d never break 50min for a 10k, but after I added intervals to my training once a week for 1-2 months, I managed.

I ran an evening marathon on Saturday. During the day I had to run various errands, then I hopped on a bus, a train, another train and another bus to get to the start. I was pretty drenched already by the time I got there. Still, I felt pumped for the run and started out overoptimistically. I ran the first three quarters at my half marathon pace, only to finish slooowly with heavily positive splits, though I still beat my previous best time by six minutes. I reached the finish about 20 minutes before sunset, then cheered on other finishers for a half hour until it was time to catch the train for the trek back home. A day well spent!

You likely signed up when it was sdf.lonestar.org but I think SDF has had the sdf.org domain for 15+ years at this point, and the freeshell.org domain has been around for over twenty.

https://github.com/alex-hhh/ActivityLog2

A few features I really like in ActivityLog2 are the ability to chart aerobic efficiency over time, to do my own critical power/velocity analysis, and also just plot weekly volume (by time or distance). That way I have a multifaceted view of what’s going on rather than just whatever Garmin finds worthy of highlighting.

I’m training for a marathon the weekend after next. I’m excited for it. It’s an evening event, and since the sun doesn’t set till almost 11pm it should be really nice. I signed up for it on a whim last week after my long runs went super well and I felt good about my running, also after going for a few “barefoot” runs (wearing sandals), which is new for me. I ran a half marathon in my racing flats not long ago, but I think for this marathon I will stick to my regular distance running shoes.

It feels a bit weird not to be on a proper training schedule but I think my instincts are guiding me well at this point (and my endurance is still pretty high from an ultra two months ago).