Floris Gierman documents a day of marathon training with hill repeats, multiple runs, and a sauna session. His coach Andy Hook says walking is acceptable, especially for beginners. Floris tracks fitness and fatigue on Strava's Elevate metrics and plans a full rest day after a high-volume week of seven hours of running.
Chapters
Round 3! Reminder for next time to bring some water. That's the mountains. It's okay to walk and just to kind of get into that routine. Good job, man. Good shit. Look at that. You know that feeling when you're going for a run and all of a sudden you really, really have to use the bathroom? Well, I'm about 30 minutes into my run and that's happening right now. And you know what? Found a bathroom. Now it's just a question if it's going to be open. So happy right now. I don't know what it is, like, I, I run fast at most of the mornings and usually it all goes smooth and the stomach doesn't have any issues at all. And then every now and then, you know what I think it might be? Like, not last last night, but the night before I slept 2 hours 45 minutes, and so my whole digestive system is kind of off after that. Every time when I have little sleep, I notice that I get hungry at different times and like it just— the whole system just works differently. That's why I think it might have thrown me off. But yeah, now we can run again. Let's do this. Saturday morning, no one out. Look at that beautiful mountains in the background here. And again it happened. Look at this one. That was in the middle of the freaking bike path. What is he thinking? You think you would be safe running in the middle of a pedestrian sidewalk or bike path, but no, even here Last night on a walk with my kids, we saw some more tarantulas again. That's why they're probably also top of mind. This is like the spider episode, man. Whenever I have the option to run between dirt and road, I do like to jump on the dirt quite often too, just to kind of mix things up. Until he comes. Waking up. There's the sun again. This is always the best way to start a day. I mean, how can you not feel good after an hour morning run with the sun in your face? Started off really mellow, and then sure enough, once the diesel was warmed up, felt like I could keep going forever. Feels really nice. Just ran for an hour. I'll probably end up running later this afternoon again just because it's a nice day and we've got some more time. It's the weekend, so yeah, good beginning of the weekend. I will say I did just drop my GoPro and it shattered the glass in about 1,000 different pieces, but hey, the lens is still crisp and working. Second run of the day, let's do some speed work. Found myself a nice local hill, 0.36 miles. It's, uh, quite warm out, 91 Fahrenheit, so about 33 Celsius, with a solid climb. Let's get a few hill repeats going. I'm gonna try to ease into it just to kind of get used to the hill and the higher intensity, but I'm going to turn off my camera now because there's no way I can maintain talking. Later. Almost, just until that sign. Yeah, let's do it again. I just finished round 2. Definitely can't Underestimate the hills and the heat. Round 3. Reminder for next time to bring some water. But hey, can't win them all. Let's do this. And it's not happening. I'm over it. I'm such weak sauce sometimes. Gee, what was that? I just wasn't feeling it. Couldn't breathe normal. I know that's somewhat normal with higher intensity workouts, but I'm just gonna jog mellow back, do a few pickups on the flat, come back to this hill again another day, maybe when it's not so warm. Hydrate well, my friends. It's nice to just stand over here in the shade for a little bit, cool down a bit. Then in a few minutes I will go again. Love it. Hey, Sai!
Hi, how are you?
I'm sweaty.
I know, me too. I was sweating, but I was pouring so much water on.
Did you run already or not?
Yeah, I did 11 miles.
Ah, sweet. Yeah, a few more flat intervals. Let's go! It's funny how much easier these flat intervals feel, how much more breathable they are as well. At least the beginning of it. All right, I'm out of breath, I'm out of breath. Hill repeat to spontaneous fart line. I'll take it. Yeah, we made it! Now let's jump straight into the sauna. It's so easy how quickly the sweating goes after you come from a workout and you go straight into a sauna. It's nice infrared. We'll just be in here for about 15-20 minutes, truly help develop those sweat glands further. Cheers! I just pucker dialed Andy, and Andy Hook's on the line over here. He was just recording a little video earlier. That's funny. Do you have one tip for people looking to improve their running?
If I have to say anything, just make sure that they can take it easy and it's okay to walk, especially it's going to be problematic because you want to go fast. There's no shame in walking when you first started out.
That's right. Well said, Andy. All right, we'll talk to you very soon again. All right, later. Bye. It is Sunday and I just finished an hour run. I really wasn't feeling like running today and I still ended up going. The morning kind of got away from us and then we went to the playground, ended up playing a lot with the kids. And I was just already tired, yet still had about an hour on the schedule. So my main plan was just to go out, run for a little bit, and sure enough, started to enjoy it again. And that's— you might have that as well sometimes where you don't necessarily feel like running. Might happen one time to you, and yes, you can decide to take a rest day, which typically I do end up listening to the body well and whenever needed, take a rest day or cut a run shorter or something like that. Yet once I'm getting towards the peak training stages from a training cycle, sometimes I end up going out as well even though I'm not necessarily feeling like running. And just to kind of get into that routine, and sometimes pushing a little bit through discomfort is, is a good thing too. I think it's a double-edged sword, really. Now that I ran for an hour, just took it easy, ended up actually listening to a podcast by David Sinclair about aging. It was very interesting. And yeah, normally I don't necessarily run with music or with headphones that much, but whatever it takes, right? Get outside, get it done. So that felt good. Finished the week at about 7 hours of running. It was nice. It was one of my longest weeks, or it was my longest training volume week in many, many months. So definitely slowly adjusting again, additional training volume, ended up with 2 speed sessions, a few sauna sessions. So definitely some stress on my body in a good way. And I can see as well when I'm looking at Elevate by Strava at the graph It is increasing over here. You do see that the overall fitness line is going up. Yesterday, the fatigue level actually is quite high as well. And this is now— it's Sunday. I know that on Monday I'm just going to take a full rest and recovery day, kind of recharge the mind, get more excited again to run, recharge the body, get a good amount of sleep, and then Tuesday morning, back at it again. So you just tell yourself it's a good time and you end up smiling. Another morning skate.
