Something just doesn't add up and is still a mystery to me.
10/1/20 - 8 mile M Tempo with HR in the 153-168 area (90 min).
10/10/20 - 10 mile EA with HR that doesn't really budge (120 min).
10/11/20 - 14 mile LR with HR that climbs from 144-165 by mile 8. You were in the M Tempo area despite the pace being a good 60/sec per mile slower.
I almost feel like for the last 14 miler you should pull the 10 mile EA the proceeding day. Just do 45-60 min instead of 120 min. And if you can swing it, don't do the tennis either. Just to see if your 14 miler feels better on 10/25. The trick is making sure you don't go faster than LR pace even if you feel good. Cause you'd want to save that race effort for race day itself. But the 80 min at M Tempo tells me you can do it. So something is going on with the back to back runs. I still don't know exactly what. How many calories of actual food did you consume on Saturday? You conservatively burned 1700 calories between the EA run and Tennis. So something on the order of 3000-3500 calories consumed at least?
I was going to point out the two 8M-tempo runs that I've done OK. I agree it is a mystery. I also don't eat anything on those runs.
I am confused about "making sure you don't go faster than LR pace even if you feel good". I haven't done this. That's why I always calculate what my splits should be and keep to them religiously. Is there somewhere that you think I was going too fast?
So, for Oct. 25, you want me to only do 60 min EA? And hopefully no tennis. I will see about the tennis...right now, weekends are pretty much the only time I can play since we have very little indoor play. But maybe it will rain and keep me from having to cut it.
Incidentally, this is also part of the mystery....I have been doing the Saturday tennis + training run for several years now. But usually I do OK on the Sunday run, so it is extra puzzling. And this time of year the weather is better, so I would expect it to be less of an issue.
On Saturday, I ate a bunch. Saturday is sort of my cheat day. I did not track it carefully, but given the quantity of PB that I ate during that day, I would expect about 3000 cal. Sunday morning, bigger than usual breakfast about 4.5 hrs before the run with a 250-cal snack about 2 hrs before.
I was wondering about anemia...I have had that in the past, but now I take significant iron supplements. My last blood test in January showed all normal numbers for iron serum, iron saturation, and hemoglobin, and these numbers have been normal for a couple of years.
