David Taylor Gonzales

Editor’s Note: I know this blog is “late” compared to other blogs I’ve done. I decided I want to post these after my weekly long runs going forward. Sorry to the two or three people who read this. I’ll be more consistent going forward.

10/2

As part of my rest day, I took a walk at work and did another walk with Lane and Joy and John in the evening. Joy is getting really fast. I know already that I am going to look back on these moments as a family when the kids get older. I am learning how to cherish this season of life, knowing that it’ll feel incredibly brief with the gift of hindsight. I said it to a friend last week, “Children are, after the mercy of God, the gift of Jesus and the joy of marriage-the truest measure of a man’s wealth.”

10/3

Today I ran 5 miles at an easy pace to get the legs warm in preparation for tomorrow. I mixed in 6 short strides at a 5:00/mi pace. Strides on easy runs are something I could stand to utilize more as a way to help my legs get warm more quickly. We are driving up to St. Louis tomorrow for Libbi’s (my sister-in-law) wedding shower so my morning long run routine will be a bit different but I’m going to bring my usual pre-run snack with me that way I can control as many variables as possible before I run 18 miles. The legs felt great today, I guess that’s to be expected since I missed my Tuesday workout for the second week in a row.

The biggest thing for me to focus on the rest of the day will be keeping my stress low at work and during the drive up to St. Louis. I am praying the kids sleep at least part of the way and are well behaved so we can make good time and not mess with their sleep routine too much. I am getting off at 3:30 today so we should be able to get on the road by 4:30 or so.

I am very thankful I was able to get off work early. It made packing the car so much slower paced and less stressful for everyone. John was able to sleep for a good portion of the packing up. Lane and I ate the left over chicken and rice from last night and we were able to hit the road by a little after 4:30 just like we planned. The kids did really well. Joy had to go to the bathroom about halfway through but John was able to mostly entertain himself and Joy watched a couple Scooby Doo movies. I’m really proud of them. I couldn’t imagine being stuck in a car seat for 3 hours. Sounds terrible. When we got to town, I hugged my in laws and headed straight to bed. Ideally I would’ve been asleep by 9/9:15 but we had to put the kids down at 8:30 and unpack the car so I was able to fall asleep around 9:45.

10/4

The kids are getting sick unfortunately. John had a rough night and because of my early morning, I wasn’t able to help overnight. I woke up a few times but didn’t feel too terrible when I woke up. I think I was sick last week because I don’t have any symptoms but I did have a bit of a sore throat, some fatigue and a low HRV.

I woke up at 5:05, a bit later than usual due to John’s sickness. He ended up spending the night in bed with us but I still managed to scrape almost 7 hours of sleep out of it. That was enough to go into the day’s run with at least a little confidence. The route today was going to be hilly, I knew that going in so I decided I would run with a distance and time goal in mind which was new. I told myself the goal was to complete 18 miles but not to run for more than 3 hours. This allowed me to run somewhat freely, knowing that no matter how hard I had to fight for each mile, I had an end point in mind. I subscribe to The Marathon Handbook and they did an article a few weeks ago about hours of training and at what point a recreational runner should “max out” their training. The research suggests that aerobic benefit returns begin to diminish rapidly around the three hour mark for a long run session, which coincides with the point where injury risk begins to climb exponentially. I’ve been using that research as a benchmark for my long run during peak week (next Saturday).

This wasn’t my favorite run. The neighborhood I ran in is a little too small to run significant distances without running loops over and over again which I pretty much did. One good thing from this run, there was a lot of hills throughout the run which meant that it was a lower impact on my joints overall. I was obviously still sore, it’s impossible not to be when I’m running that kind of distance but I recovered more quickly and effectively afterwards. I spent the rest of the day with family helping pack up Libbi and Hayden’s stuff while Lane was at the wedding shower.

I have realized that carb consumption is something of a blindspot for me. I don’t eat enough clean carbs (e.g. fruit) so I made a concerted effort to eat clean foods today. I had two honey crisp apples in the afternoon and a lot of sourdough bread. I think I did a pretty good job compared to some of my post run fueling in previous weeks.

Literally within an hour of typing this I found out that we’re having pizza for dinner tonight. If you know anything about me, you know that I have no discipline when it comes to pizza. I guess we’re gonna be a little high in fat content today. That’s okay. If there’s ever a day for it, it’s long run day.

10/5

Last night was rough. I’m really thankful that today is rest and recovery. I fell asleep on the couch listening to a podcast and Lane came in and woke me up after about an hour. My watch says that I got almost 10 hours of sleep but it was interrupted multiple times throughout the night. The kids are still sick and tonight was probably their worst night in terms of sleep. The whole family is sleepy today. My legs feel fine so I think I’ll be fresh for tomorrow’s run. I really hope I’m not getting sick. This week is my peak of training and I don’t want to miss any sessions if possible.

10/6

Well, it’s another rest day for me. I woke up feeling extremely groggy and sick so I went back to bed. Today was supposed to be a critical velocity session. I’ll move that to tomorrow. My training readiness was only in the mid 70s so running while fatigued with low HRV probably hurts my training more than it helps. I hate missing sessions but I have to go back to what I always say: we’re trying to be good, not perfect. I can still have a great training week if I rest effectively and don’t get sick with whatever the kids got.

10/7

Today is critical velocity training. I did a 1 mile warm up with strides, then 6 miles @ critical velocity (1 hour steady pace) which today was an average of 7:44/mi. Garmin counted this as a base run despite the fact that I ran about 80 seconds faster than my goal marathon race pace. Felt really good and steady throughout the run. Marathon training has taught me to enjoy speed training even though it’s tough. This was an enjoyable session.

10/8

I completed an easy run to and from bible study. I mixed in some strides tonight, something that I think I’ll continue to do for all of my easy runs to improve leg turnover and get used to running at different exertion points. I want to get better at accelerating and decelerating in a controlled manner. Not much else to report today.

10/9

This morning I woke up and got coffee with Travis. The weather is starting to cool down and he’s not keen on running in temperatures below 50 degrees. We’re not there yet, but he just had a baby a month ago and we needed to catch up. We went to El Cafecito which was fun because we got to see the shop’s expansion. Lane and I had a date night and I wanted to switch things up from our usual date ideas. We jogged from the house to Cherry Picker and had charcuterie and drinks. After that, we walked to Andy’s for custard and then walked home and talked on the porch. This wasn’t a training day, so there’s not a ton to report on. 1.9 miles at easy pace during the date. My legs felt no fatigue so I shouldn’t have trouble with tomorrow’s run. I’ll do 5 miles in the morning.

10/10

I got out the door a little before 6:20 AM and mixed in four controlled strides just to break up the monotony. I’ve started doing strides during my easy runs because they help my body warm up more quickly especially since 99% of my sessions take place in the morning within 10-15 minutes of waking up. This obviously doesn’t apply to my weekend long runs, I try to give myself a full hour after waking before I start those because I have to practice nutrition and hydration. Total stats today: 5.1 miles, 9:35/mi pace, average heart rate 128 BPM.

I feel really fresh as I prepare for tomorrow’s long run. I plan to run on “feel” tomorrow meaning I am going to run 15-19 miles depending on how things go. If I had to guess, tomorrow will be 16 miles with some marathon pace mixed in and a couple cool down miles. I need to be mindful of how I feel because I am going to play ultimate frisbee with some friends tomorrow morning after the run. I told them that I won’t be running but even if I just walk and jog, I need to be careful.

Another thing to note, I am trying new nutrition tomorrow. I bought a package of Honey Stinger gels. I tried one this morning after the 5 miles to see if the flavor was tolerable. It’s not bad, certainly better than anything else I’ve tried. I am going to bring three with me tomorrow and monitor my stomach throughout. My stomach is pretty resilient so I don’t think it’ll be an issue but it’s still important to practice. As per usual, my goal is to wake up around 5 AM, get food in my system by 5:15, and out the door by 6. If that rhythm continues to work, then I’ll feel confident going into race day where the gun doesn’t go off until 7. I’ve heard of some people who wake up as early as 3:30/4 AM. I hopefully won’t have to do that but we’ll have to play that by ear.

10/11

I woke up at 5:05, I was a bit slow getting out of bed and didn’t eat fully until 5:20 which I was a little worried about. I still managed to get my stretching and hydration done by 5:55 so I started the run a bit before 6. I decided to bring a water bottle with me since I wasn’t sure how far I would go. I ran the same route I’ve been doing the last month or so, down to Galloway and back. It became pretty clear to me that I had the stomach and the energy to handle 18 miles today as long as I kept the easy miles truly easy.

I did 4 miles at 10:03/mi pace, then settled in at 9:26/mi pace for the next 9 miles, then 3 miles at 9:01/mi and two cool down miles at 9:51/mi. This was the perfect final long run to me. I almost feel silly saying that since I’ve never completed a marathon training block or a marathon distance itself before but when it comes to running long distance, if I’m able to challenge myself without feeling like I’m risking an injury, I count that as a win and I felt that this morning. Total stats: 18.11 miles at 9:33/mi average pace. Heart rate: 133 BPM. I burned about 2,145 calories so I’ll be making carbs my main priority today. I took my gels at the 35 minute, 80 minute, and 115 minute mark. I definitely could’ve used one more towards the end of the run so I’m sure that I’ll need a gel at the 17 mile mark on race day.

I was able to play ultimate frisbee without issue afterwards. I chowed down on a big slice of sourdough when I got home and then headed straight to the field. I should’ve known going into this that I’d be too competitive to lightly jog and walk the whole time. I tracked it on my watch and Garmin counted this as a pretty intense anaerobic workout so the AI is telling me to take the next 4 days off which is a first for me.

I think I’ve said this before, maybe I’ve said it too much, but I’m looking forward to tapering. I am going to get more time with family in the coming weeks and we’ll get to do family breakfasts on Saturday mornings again. Training has taught me a lot of valuable lessons, I’m sure I’ll come back to this blog and capture some of those things after the race. For now,

Keep Going!