Kazrak's In My Day We Had A Kessel Run Training Journal (Comments Welcome)

Okay, week summary: I skipped the Tuesday run for recovery time.

And then, Princess Half.

Goals for the race: don't get hurt, finish, make a Disney PR (current 3:13:54 from Light Side 2017), finish under 3 hours. (That last was a stretch goal that I didn't expect to meet.)

It was kinda cold out there, but not too bad. My daughter and I headed over to the corrals once they opened - which is a bit of a hike for this layout. I was already not a fan of Princess Weekend given how packed the parks have been the past two days; this wasn't helping matters.

Once we got to the corral we could penguin-huddle with the rest of Corral E. We hung out for an hour or so until it was time to start launching.

Corral E launched very quickly - we were across the line at 5:48. My daughter and I kept together for the first four and a half minutes, with me running through my first walk break, then I dropped back to a walk and she kept going. My plan was 2m run/30s walk intervals. This worked fine for the first 7 or 8 miles.

And this was where my lack of long-distance training bit me. I haven't run longer than 10k since Bridge to Bridge in August, and haven't done longer than 12k since Star Wars Half last April. I'd spent too much energy early and was starting to drag. I skipped a few run intervals and ended some early.

Around mile 9, my ankle started hurting a bit. I took off a run interval to see if it would improve, and it did. No other issues for the race, other than just being tired.

Final time, 3:06:40, a 14:15 pace. New Disney PR, and I have now run in all six of the US parks. I'm not a huge fan of this course; I like the Star Wars one that starts in the MK parking lot more.

My daughter finished in 2:48:05, a Disney PR for her, and she is now halfway to her Castle-to-Chateau medal.

Splits (from Strava, which finished at 13.30 miles):

1. 12:58
2. 12:31
3. 13:04
4. 13:08
5. 14:05 (Artificially high due to bathroom stop at MK Guest Relations)
6. 14:04 (In MK)
7. 13:32
8. 13:36
9. 14:52
10. 15:02
11. 14:31
12. 15:30
13. 15:43
0.3: 13:06
 
Okay, week summary: I skipped the Tuesday run for recovery time.

And then, Princess Half.

Goals for the race: don't get hurt, finish, make a Disney PR (current 3:13:54 from Light Side 2017), finish under 3 hours. (That last was a stretch goal that I didn't expect to meet.)

It was kinda cold out there, but not too bad. My daughter and I headed over to the corrals once they opened - which is a bit of a hike for this layout. I was already not a fan of Princess Weekend given how packed the parks have been the past two days; this wasn't helping matters.

Once we got to the corral we could penguin-huddle with the rest of Corral E. We hung out for an hour or so until it was time to start launching.

Corral E launched very quickly - we were across the line at 5:48. My daughter and I kept together for the first four and a half minutes, with me running through my first walk break, then I dropped back to a walk and she kept going. My plan was 2m run/30s walk intervals. This worked fine for the first 7 or 8 miles.

And this was where my lack of long-distance training bit me. I haven't run longer than 10k since Bridge to Bridge in August, and haven't done longer than 12k since Star Wars Half last April. I'd spent too much energy early and was starting to drag. I skipped a few run intervals and ended some early.

Around mile 9, my ankle started hurting a bit. I took off a run interval to see if it would improve, and it did. No other issues for the race, other than just being tired.

Final time, 3:06:40, a 14:15 pace. New Disney PR, and I have now run in all six of the US parks. I'm not a huge fan of this course; I like the Star Wars one that starts in the MK parking lot more.

My daughter finished in 2:48:05, a Disney PR for her, and she is now halfway to her Castle-to-Chateau medal.

Splits (from Strava, which finished at 13.30 miles):

1. 12:58
2. 12:31
3. 13:04
4. 13:08
5. 14:05 (Artificially high due to bathroom stop at MK Guest Relations)
6. 14:04 (In MK)
7. 13:32
8. 13:36
9. 14:52
10. 15:02
11. 14:31
12. 15:30
13. 15:43
0.3: 13:06
Contgrats on the new Disney PR! Hope you had a fun time during the run and you are enjoying the packed parks as much as possible!
 
Victory 5k recap is in the main running thread. Plan for this coming week:

I'm in Austin this week, and recovering from three races in three weeks. I'm trying to decide if I even want to bring my running gear with me.

I think I will, tentatively planning on two short runs, Tuesday and Thursday. I don't expect to do a lot of running, but I'll try to get something in.

Next currently-scheduled race is Star Wars Half, but I may see about doing the Hellyer 10k in 4 weeks.
 


Ended up not using the running gear, and took the week off. My hip was complaining a bit on Monday, so I figured I'd give it the time.

Plan for this week:
Monday: 2m/30s x8, taking it easy.
Tuesday: C25K week 3 with younger son.
Wedneaday: Trainer session.
Thursday: 2m/30s x8, taking it _very_ easy.
Friday: C25K week 3 with younger son.
Saturday: Might have to skip due to getting older son to the airport. If I do run, probably 2m/30s around the college (3 miles).
 
Okay, well, that plan didn't survive long in the face of lockdown.

So, the past two weeks have had a little running and not much more.

Basically, I've been doing the Tue/Fri runs with my younger son - daughter joined in on the Friday one last week.

Trainer sessions aren't happening. My trainer sent me a few workouts to do at home, so I did a stretching one today. The plan right now is to do that one every morning and slowly add more.

My next race that A) might happen, and B) I care about the results, comes in early August. Summer Breeze, I'm hoping to run the 10k for Food and Wine PoT. Plan right now is to do Tue/Fri this week and add in workout sessions on Mon/Thu. We'll see beyond that.
 
Okay, two months to the day since my last update.

It hasn't been good. I'm keeping up the Tue/Fri runs, but they're getting slower unless my daughter's along.

Daily stretching sessions failed after about a week.

Mon/Thu runs are happening about half the time.

I'm pretty much giving up on PoT in August, although if the race happens I'll probably run it.
 


And, we're almost three months since the last update.

My daughter has helped me get back into the Mon/Thu groove. We did straight mile runs (no walk breaks) in a little under 14 minutes this week.

Tue/Fri is still on week 3, but we're bumping up to week 4 next week.

No firm plan right now, but I am signed up for Kessel Run again, so there is a goal. I don't expect to improve my PoT but it's worth a shot.
 
And, just as I'm starting to get back up to speed...

The air here isn't breathable. It's not safe to run right now because there's fires all over the Bay Area.

I got in one run last week, the Tuesday run, and we didn't go to week 4 because it was too hot. (Even more too hot on Monday.) Thursday I had an 8am meeting; by Friday, the fires were in full effect.

On the plus side, I got a new Fitbit on Friday and have set a 5000 step goal. I've been having trouble getting moving in general, so the hope is that this will help deal with the inertia of motionlessness.
 
The air has cleaned up enough that I might be able to go running tomorrow. (Couldn't today because of 8am meeting with a team in London.) We'll see how it goes.
 
...so, it's been a few months here. I got back to running, but not as seriously as I had before. I was mostly doing Tuesday with youngest son and Friday with oldest and youngest.

I got out of bed a few weeks ago with my back deciding that it hated me. I spent a couple days hardly able to walk, and certainly not able to run. It improved within a week or so, to the point where I could walk fairly easily, but running was still out of the question.

My younger son and I tried a couple times, and ended up just walking instead; same with my oldest son. It never quite worked.

So, today, everything seemed to line up. Oldest son and I went out, ran a couple minutes, walked a couple minutes, repeat. Ended up going about 2/3 of a mile in about 12 miles. First run since January 19.

Progress. I'll take what I can get right now.
 
And, tried the usual Tuesday run (C25K week 3, 90s run/90s walk/3m run/3m walk and repeat once) with oldest and youngest son. (Middle son got a job and his own apartment, and didn't like running anyway.) It worked about as well as ever - 0.9 miles, 16:18 pace.

Plan going forward: Mon/Thu run with oldest son, freeform. Tue/Fri run with oldest and youngest, C25K week 3 and move up as he's ready. Early next month, oldest son should be going to Germany, and I'll continue without him.
 
With oldest son in Germany, and youngest son becoming increasingly uninterested in running, it was hard to keep going, and around the beginning of May it just...stopped.

I took the time to think about what I wanted, and whether I wanted to continue, and decided that, yes, I needed to get going again. What I had been doing wasn't working but I could take the time to plan. I decided that some sort of C25K restart might be good, just for structure.

Looking over week 3, which is what we'd been doing, and week 4, I decided that I didn't want to do the formal C25K intervals but something similar sounded good. I ended up on 3m/90s x4 as about halfway between the 90s/90s/3m/3m x2 of week 3 and the 3m/90s/5m/2m30s x2 of week 4.

Also, I grabbed the Airpods that I picked up during lockdown and started using them while running. I've been working on a playlist to shuffle from, tweaking it based on what seems to help and what doesn't.

So, the plan so far has been 30m/90s x4, Monday/Wednesday/Friday. This is a really nice interval for my run, as it ends up meaning that I run up to the base of the hill leading to the bridge over the creek, walk over the bridge, and then start running again, in both directions.

Other than the day I forgot the headphones, average pace has been trending faster, from 14:22 the first day to 13:53 yesterday. Although yesterday is largely due to an overly enthusiastic reaction to "The Cup of Life" as the last interval started. (Best running song ever, but use with caution. I ended up having to slow down for the last 30 seconds or I would have puked; split pace for the last 2 minutes was 11:22.)

Plan is 3m/90s x4 tomorrow, then trying to push to 3m/90s x5 on Monday. Wednesday I have an early dentist appointment, although the idea of getting up at like 6:30 to try to get in even a small run has been tempting me. If I do run it'll probably only be 3m/90s x2 or x3. 3m/90s x4 planned for next Friday, unless I feel like more at the time.

Eventually I want to split the runs into different types a bit more, probably two days of interval, one for distance and one for speed, and one pushing runs as far as I can without dropping to a walk. But I need to build up my base fitness level again first.
 
So, the reason I went with simpler on/off intervals was that it was easier on the Garmin. I just found the 'workouts' setting in the app, and...yeah. I'll do 3m/90s x4 tomorrow, but I may see about something fancier for next week, or maybe the week after.
 
You're not alone. I haven't run in over a month, since the 10K my daughter and I ran in Hattiesburg. It's so hot out and my motivation is just gone. I'm struggling with whether or not I will be able to continue with college next semester. I finished at the community college, but the university lacks the online classes that I really need to work with my family's schedule. If I do continue with classes, I'm probably taking an extended break from running, but if not, I need to be prepping for a half marathon in November. Right now I'm just in limbo...

Couch 2 5K has always been my go to. I use the Zen Labs 10K trainer app and just let the voice prompts interrupt my music. I have tried setting up intervals on my Garmin, but I miss seeing my pace per mile instead of the pace per interval.
 
Couch 2 5K has always been my go to. I use the Zen Labs 10K trainer app and just let the voice prompts interrupt my music. I have tried setting up intervals on my Garmin, but I miss seeing my pace per mile instead of the pace per interval.

I've used the Garmin training stuff before, although not anything fancier than repeating the same interval. My issue with it is that it then feeds the lap stats back to the app instead of mile stats. I've generally done RunDouble for C25K tracking, but last time I used it on the phone that my music's on, it was giving utterly insane pace numbers.

Thinking about how Friday's run went, I think I'm looking at at least one more week of 3m/90s x4 before I start worrying about anything else. Pace was basically the same as Wednesday's, except more consistently.
 
Today went well - a little slower than last week, but it was a bit too warm today. (65F as I started the run at about 7:45am.)

Good news, though. Brazen's got their permits through and my next race is July 31. Not sure if I'm doing 5k or 10k yet; I've got about a month to decide. We'll see how my running is going by then. If I can get in some 5k+ practice runs, I may try for the 10k; if not, then 5k.
 
So, plan for today was to cut the run short because I had an 8am dentist appointment. I got a call yesterday bumping it to 8:30am, and ended up waking up at about 6am, so I planned on a full-length run.

By early in the second interval, it was going well enough that I decided to push for an extra one. Final result, a longer run (3m/90s x5 instead of x4), and at the fastest pace I've had so far, with my first sub-14m mile since...probably early last year.

Plan is still x4 on Friday, but we'll see how I'm feeling.
 
My issue with it is that it then feeds the lap stats back to the app instead of mile stats.

If you import your Garmin watch data into Strava, then you can see the individual mile splits complied from your intervals as well as the intervals broken up.
 

GET A DISNEY VACATION QUOTE

Dreams Unlimited Travel is committed to providing you with the very best vacation planning experience possible. Our Vacation Planners are experts and will share their honest advice to help you have a magical vacation.

Let us help you with your next Disney Vacation!





Top