Week 7 Training Recap: The Week Before

Last week, I had a forced down week thanks to the flu, leaving me curious about my ability to bounce back. Recovering from illness with Crohn's Disease is usually a slow process, often accompanied by lingering fatigue and related symptoms. This was the first time I’d been sick since moving from a colostomy (large intestine) to an ileostomy (small intestine) and while my disease has been in deep...

With the Vuelta a España winding down and the Big Sur Trail Half Marathon only 2-weeks away, I'm pretty much running, eating, and thinking about running. This week my obsession focus was fed by a couple of great podcast episodes, a new book to read, and getting an insight into a condition called Low Energy Availability. Here’s what I’ve been listening to/reading this week: Mastering the Art of...

“A wiser fella once said, sometimes you eat the bar, and sometimes, well, the bar eats you” - The Stranger, Big Lebowski My week started with a Remicade infusion — a medication called a TNFa inhibitor that blocks my body from responding to the tumor necrosis factor alpha protein that is used to affect inflammation events — and was poorly timed with having spent the weekend taking care of one of...

Having spent 3 weeks building distance, time, and effort (and having that pay off in a race), this week was a "down" week with lower mileage and more recovery — but was it? My overall training load (TL) was actually higher (777 vs 758 last week) because the Vuelta a España started and I had to get some miles in on the bike. Let's dive in. Catch up with my half-marathon training and mentoring: ...

August has been the busiest month of *daily life* since I started dealing with Crohn's disease over a decade ago. This week, despite ending with a race, felt *relatively easy*. Catch up with my half-marathon training and mentoring: read week 1 & week 2. Coros Half Marathon Training Training this week went a bit smoother with the other obligations of the market and mentoring. I opted to run on...

Last week, I kicked off the Coros Half Marathon Training Camp and this week the Fleet Feet Monterey Half Marathon Training program started where I am acting as a mentor to the 2:00:00-2:30:00 pace group. It was also Monterey Car Week, which meant it took twice as long to get any place and there were hundreds of millions of dollars of amazing cars scattered around town.  Coros Half Marathon Trai...

It was a busy week across the board for me and kind of the first "full life" week I've had in a very long time. I've been using a Coros products since their first Lynx helmet was on Kickstarter and I currently use the Pace 2 watch to track all of my fitness and sleep. The products keep getting better, but so does the software and now there is a full blown training calendar to go with all of the...

I lived in Santa Cruz for nearly ten years but was never able to run the iconic Wharf to Wharf race that runs from the Boardwalk to Capitola. The race is similar to Bay to Breakers in San Francisco with lots of people of all abilities out to have a good time running along some of the most epic Central Coast beach spots. While I had never raced the route before, these roads were instrumental i...