Friday Thoughts 129
Greetings. Welcome to this week’s edition of Friday Thoughts, where I share what’s been on my mind. Enjoy!
TRAINING Ramblings
My legs were feeling pretty good this week coming off the 13 mile run at Mount A. Some people have asked me what’s next?
For the past 6 moths or so I have not been able to get my groove for training. I’ll string together a week or so but then something happens. And on one hand, such is life (see video below about deload weeks, and remember there are No Normal Weeks).
Because of this, plus 100 other factors, I’ve withdrawn from the Vermont 100k. The race has been around for nearly 40 years, so I know it’s not going anywhere and there will be another chance. This summer isn’t it though.
I do have some more races on the calendar, Market Square Day 10k and an ultra in the mountains I do every August.
Before I start training for MSD though, I need to get some consistency back in my training life.
What’s worked for me before is lower stakes, low barrier to entry workouts—and that’s what I’m going to lean on in the coming weeks. Short and simple. Straight to the point. Probably only 20-30 minutes total. The goal is to build some momentum and honestly, have fun. Training has felt very chore like, and maybe that’s part of the problem too.
Deload Week
I have this story of when I got my first personal training client. It was a big deal. We were going to train 6 days a week and he was super serious.
Before we started I spent hours planning our first month of training. And like the strength and conditioning textbooks say, every 4th week I would plan a deload week to back off volume and intensity. To allow for more recovery and to give the system a chance to recover and adapt.
Then our first workout happened. He was 20 minutes late, took two important phone calls and nearly died when I gave him medicine ball slams in a finisher. After 45 minutes my month long spreadsheet was trash. We had to modify so much on the first day that the rest of the program needed to be edited.
I learned then it’s really hard to plan for people weeks and weeks in advance. Especially if the person is just a regular person, not a superstar athlete training for the olympics—where deload weeks probably make more sense.
For normal people coming to GAIN, deloads happen. Vacation, sick kids, car breakdowns, and what have you.
Mike Boyle always said, why would I lower someone’s training effect with a deload when they’re going to miss a few days a month anyway?
Instead of a planned deload, let life happen, and if you’re in tune with your body, you’ll know when to take your foot off the gas a bit.
BOLT Score
I’ve written about the Bolt Score before. I learned it from the book Oxygen Advantage. The Bolt Score measures your co2 tolerance. I used the breathing exercises prescribed in the book while getting ready to pace for 50-miles at the Wasatch 100 Mile Endurance Run in 2024. The race is in Utah and the highpoint is 10,000 feet. I had never really exercised at altitude before. Leading up to the run I did a lot of slow exhales, and exhale holds while walking or running.
I got my score up into the 40 second range. I think it really helped me with the altitude, because it didn’t affect me at all.
Check it out, and your score may surprise you!
That’s it for today, thanks for reading.
See you in the gym!
—Justin Miner