David Taylor Gonzales

10/19

I felt really good Sunday morning. Woke up around 7:20 and got the kids ready for church with Lane. We had donuts at church (old fashion glazed are our favorites). We went to Costco afterwards to pick up some bulk items we’ve been needing for awhile.

I have been telling Lane for months now that I need a new mentor. My mentor from college and pre-marital counseling, Steve Proffitt, passed away four years ago due to some health issues and I haven’t done a good job of finding someone older to learn from and meet with consistently. There’s an older man at our church named Joe who I’ve gotten to know at a few of our Men’s Breakfasts and I’ve been meaning to reach out to him about getting lunch. I finally got his number and we’re getting lunch on Wednesday. I am excited to get to know him a bit more.

In the afternoon, I was inspired by my wife’s 10k effort so I hopped into the garage for a workout before the Cowboys game at 3:30 PM. I wanted to stick to upper body to save my legs for this week. Here’s what I did:
3 sets pull-ups
5 sets dumbbell bench press
2 sets barbell shoulder press
3 sets single-arm neutral-grip dumbbell row
3 sets trap-bar shoulder shrug
4 sets dumbbell lateral raise
1 set dumbbell hammer curl
1 set dumbbell skullcrusher
1 set dragon flags for core

This workout was a fun look into the future because I’m going to be spending significantly more time in the gym this winter. I am looking forward to it. This was a lower volume workout but I haven’t worked my chest in months so it was really challenging. I was surprised how weak my biceps, shoulders and chest are after so much lower body focus the last two or three months. I used to be able to complete three sets of dumbbell bench press with the 50lb dumbbells for 8 reps per set and I couldn’t complete more than 6 reps today. In fact, on my last set I failed the 5th rep. It felt good to push myself to muscular failure. I haven’t done that in awhile. It’s a very different feeling of exertion than my high intensity run/sprint workouts.

10/20

Well, this morning was off to a rough start. I try not to go into too much detail when it comes to my gut/GI issues when they pop up but that’s really all there is to say. I had a 3 mile easy run scheduled for today and at the 2.5 mile mark I started to feel the bubbles. I walked the last 0.2 miles home and narrowly avoided disaster. I’ll say this: if you almost crap your pants at 6 in the morning, it means that the rest of your day is guaranteed to go pretty well because you can only go up from there! Total stats: 2.94 mi @ 9:56/mi pace (including the walk at the end).

Lane and I went for a late dinner date night. My mom stayed back with the kids and she does a good job with Joy’s bedtime. My parents come in really often for work stuff and spending time with us. It has been a huge blessing and allowed us to have date nights even as we’ve struggled to adjust to two kids throughout the year.

10/21

I had a glass of wine with dinner last night. Lane and I had a great date night and bought Insomnia cookies afterwards. I knew the wine would be a problem. Lane and I hardly ever drink anymore and even thought we went with a fairly mild red blend, it still totally ruined my sleep. My HRV tanked to 114ms and my resting heart rate was elevated as my body tried to digest the alcohol. I didn’t wake up until 7:30.

I was on the fence about whether I’d make it a rest day or run in the evening after work. Lane texted me offering to let me run when I got home while she cooked dinner for the kids. What a blessing and gift it is to have a generous wife! I’m going to take her up on it.

I opted for a very intense threshold run. Here’s the structure:
1.5 mile warm up
3 miles @ lactate threshold pace (6:45/mi target)
0.5 mile cool down

I wasn’t able to nail the pace zone but I was able to sustain an average pace of 6:55/mi. The wheels started to fall off towards the end (the route had hills at the end of the long interval). If my math is right, this is likely the last hard workout of training before the race. Most of my runs now will be maintenance. I’m going to keep doing some short intense intervals but I won’t be adding any big volume or anything like that.

10/22

Another day, another day of not waking up at 6 AM. I’m finding it very challenging to wake up early for these workouts and I’ve been opting for evening workouts instead. I would really like to get back on schedule before my final taper week. The weather has started to get cold, it’s in the low 40s most days when I’m waking up in the morning so I have no motivation to get out of my warm bed in the morning. I’m going to log a few short miles this evening (just 2 or 3). Then I’ll get back on schedule with 400m repeats tomorrow morning.

When I got home from work, I took the kids to play outside while Lane did a 5K workout. We ate tortellini soup and I had John try a little bit. He’s starting to experiment with food and it’s really fun to watch him play with it. He actually ate a couple small bites of tortellini! He’s growing so fast. I can’t believe he’s 7 months old.

I wanted to mix in some anaerobic work into tonight’s easy run since it’s so short. After the kids went down, I went out and decided to include six 20 second sprints at 5:10/mi pace into the route. I have nothing else to report on this one. The run was easy and I enjoyed it.

10/23

I’ve gotta figure out this sleep thing. I was unable to wake up in time for my run. It’s supposed to be 400m repeats at 10k pace. It’s not super intense but I was hoping to have it done two days before my last long run and have a rest day in between. But it works out, we have house church tonight and Lane and I can spend some time together afterwards instead of doing this workout in the evening. I think a couple things happened: it’s getting colder overnight which is helping me sleep longer and deeper, and it’s darker in the mornings (daylight savings is next week) so my Circadian rhythm is telling my body to stay asleep later. I am deciding to set my thermostat to heat the house up to 70 degrees starting at 5 AM that way my internal body temperature warms up and I feel a little more willing to get out of my warm bed with my alarm. It’s supposed to be 57 degrees tomorrow morning so I should be a little more willing to get up than I have been on these mornings when it’s been in the low to mid 40s.

10/24

Success! I set four alarms to wake up and got out the door by about 6:20 AM. I completed the same run I was planning on doing yesterday. Here’s the full structure:
12 minute zone 2 warm up
9 400m intervals @ 10k pace (targeting 7:00-8:10/mi)
1 minute recovery jogging in between
10 minute cool down

I had some stiffness in my left knee and I wasn’t sure if it was a serious problem or not so I took the first two intervals very easy. I ran them at 7:43/mi and 7:31/mi each which allowed me to run a negative split across the remaining intervals. After the second interval ended, the stiffness was gone and I felt comfortable ramping up from there. The next seven intervals felt smooth. With the gift of hindsight, I should’ve structured these intervals to be a bit more challenging and maybe cut the total mileage down a bit. 7:30/mi pace just isn’t challenging enough for 400 meters. My last two intervals were run at 6:58/mi pace.

I guess the bright side is this: if you’re going to err on the side of caution and ease, that’s probably a good thing to do during my taper. I have my 9 mile long run tomorrow and I’m glad my legs will feel good. This run should have no impact tomorrow morning as long as I get good sleep tonight. Even though the timing doesn’t demand it, I’m going to still treat tomorrow as a dress rehearsal. I’ll wake up at 5, eat my oats, and try to be out the door around 6 AM. I will take one gel with me so I can keep getting accustomed to the flavor. I’m going to keep the run easy tomorrow.

10/25

Everything went according to plan today except my knee. Today is the second day in a row where I’ve woken up with stiffness. I inputted my symptoms to ChatGPT and it doesn’t seem concerning. I used this run as a test to see if the knee pain went away or got worse throughout the run. After about 15 minutes the pain was totally gone so it’s a good sign. I decided to pick up the pace in the back half of the run and the knee held up really great. I even did butt kicks to fully stretch the quad and knee and felt nothing in the leg. ChatGPT listed quad irritation as the likely culprit, something that apparently can happen during a taper when my body is adjusting to changes in my training. I didn’t know that was a thing until today.

I am somewhat nervous about the knee. This isn’t what I wanted to be dealing with in the final 8 days of training but I am hopeful that the leg will bounce back before race day. ChatGPT is pretty confident that it will. I’m going to try to keep my training plan the same as I had it before this flare up and see how my body responds. Tomorrow is an easy 2 mile shakeout and then I have one 5 mile dress rehearsal scheduled. That will be my longest run next week.

I’m attaching a video with some reflections from training. Next week’s blog will have a more comprehensive overview and breakdown along with some more thought out reflections on the race but I wanted to take a moment just to brag about how awesome my wife is and what I’m proud of.

Keep Going!