Even Coaches are Learning Too.

I'm back after a brief hiatus.

Life happens is what I always say.

The most interesting part of my time away from this newsletter was experiencing a historic earthquake during my family vacation to Taiwan.

The funny running story here...I took an early morning run and hike to the top of Elephant Mountain before the earthquake! The moment I arrived back my hotel, the earthquake happened.

So my hiatus away from the newsletter also meant sporadic training. I did a 5k race this past weekend and my performance showed how much fitness I lost since my PR 5k performance.

Take a look at my metrics from my PR 5k performance in March:

As you can see I was able to keep a sub-7 pace, power numbers (the green to the far right) looked consistent, and more importantly my HR didn't get too close to my max (about high 180s).

From these numbers you can see that I was working hard, but not feeling terrible.

I ran a 20:37 that day.

Now let's look at this past weekend's 5K attempt.

Immediately you can see the drop off in my performance. After the first mile my pace (teal numbers) was slowing down and power numbers declining too.

Remember that the power numbers can be an indirect measure of my running form and efficiency.

You can see that my HR numbers were increasing too with each mile, reaching my upper limit in the 180s. This makes sense too because everything was starting to hurt and running just felt hard.

I ran a 22:23.

Let this be a lesson to you and me. Fitness drops off considerably after 3-6 weeks.

What I failed to do was continue with the fast interval workouts. I was doing easy runs but even then my training runs weren't consistent. Travel can do that to training.

So look, you can't wish into existence your performance. You gotta put in the work!

And so the work starts for next 8 weeks leading up to Peachtree Road Race 10k on July 4th.

I'll keep you updated weekly here on how my training goes. Don't forget to follow along on my Instagram for more behind the scenes look into my training too.

How is training going for you? Reply back and let me know. I've love to hear from you.

Thanks for reading!