 Oh my, my, oh my, whoa! We're leaving the house today everyone. Kicking off marathon training week 11 with a little exploration. Haven't left the house in a little while and of course, a little coffee. Can't leave the house without coffee. All right, let's go. And is anyone out there having a little case of the cabin fever? And it's kind of crazy, but where I'm going today is I got that far from my house and I've never been here in my entire life. So here we go, this rock and roll. I actually don't even know where I'm going exactly. I know the general area, but this is part of the whole exploration process. Figuring out where this parking lot is at. And we're going to talk about the time trial here in a minute. Okay, getting the jacket on. I think we're ready, laced up, ready to go. But first, a quick shout out to all of the race directors around the world watching this blog right now. If you could, if you're a race director, please let us know down in the comments. Why? So we can give you a big thank you. All the runners watching this blog right now, go down into the comments and just say thank you and let your appreciation be known. And here's why. The last month has been crazy, globally crazy around the world, but the race directors have had to deal with cancelling their races, maybe transferring their race to a virtual race, which is not easy to do. Possibly mailing out packets and t-shirts and medals around the world or across the country, wherever you might live, to all of the runners who are hoping to run their race. Bottom line, I guarantee it's been a pretty big challenge, if not headache, to deal with the coronavirus as a race director in 2020. Also, also, Marathon Training Week 11 begins today. I am learning right now how difficult it is to come up with a course to do a time trial. This week is my time trial week, all right? And I've been researching and researching and looking around and trying to find a location in Denver, Colorado, or at least somewhere in the front range where there's no stop lights, no stop signs, a course that is fairly flat and it's hard. It's taking a lot of time for me to nail a 13 mile, that's what I'm looking for, for the time trial on Saturday or Sunday, coming up this week, for me to do my tune-up race for the Marathon on April 19th, okay? So again, huge shout out to the race directors, thank you for all you do, and I hope you get some love down in the comments. All right, we're off, exploring a new location here in Denver. We've got dirt on the side of the trail, it's lovely, dirt, I call it a cup of dirt. Respect goes up, it goes up for the race directors. I think I went about, let's see, about 10 or 11 miles, and interesting, I don't know if the Cherry Creek Trail is gonna be the course for the time trial, we shall see, but I'm glad it was good, but it was, you know, a little up and down, up and down type of situation, so anyway, it was, you know, this is why you get out there ahead of time and try and figure it out. It's just one of those things, okay? I went in upward, you know what? We'll go check the mailbox, see if there's any, see if there's anything at the PO box, woo! Boy. We've got a box to open up, all right, exciting times, we'll get to this box here in one second, but first is this saga with this light right there, which probably looks okay right now, is finally coming to an end. I finally ordered the new light last night, so hopefully in the next couple of days, the quality of production here in the studio is gonna go up, but oh man, this light is driving me crazy. If it dies in the next five to 10 minutes, it's overheating, so that is what's going on there. Okay, also before the box is a marathon training playlist, I finally made one in what is a playlist in case you don't know, it's a series of videos on the channel because there's a lot of videos to dig through, I get it, and it can be overwhelming sometimes, so there's a Nike running shoe playlist, there's a how to run faster playlist, there's a Solomon running shoe playlist, and now finally there's a marathon training plan playlist, which is a series of videos all about my journey training for the Hamburg marathon, which this vlog right now is gonna end up in that playlist, so just wanna bring that to your attention, upper right hand corner in case you wanna check out the entire journey, and now, of course, it's not the Hamburg marathon, it's the D'Amore Global Running Virtual Marathon, so anyway, okay, here we go, let's open this up real quick here, man, what is it? Oh yeah, oh my goodness, shout out to Mizuno Running City, USA, I feel horrible, everybody. Mizuno reached out to me and invited me to come shout out to Pyfe. Pyfe is my old teammate at the University of Colorado and Pyfe works for Mizuno, and so thank you for sending this along, I was gonna try and meet up with them at the Olympic trials last month, which seems like ages ago, in Atlanta, and so anyway, it just was unable to happen with a quick trip, but they sent this along, let's open, oh, this is a nice backpack, oh my, whoa. I am saving this running shoe box forever, 51st Peach Tree Rider, this is amazing, thank you so much to the entire Mizuno team for sending these along, oh yeah, wow, oh my gosh, look at this, look at this, look at this, oh, red, white, and blue, baby, good old red, white, and blue, and then a tank top here, or a racing singlet, I should say, okay, that, oh, it's a t-shirt, that is awesome, thank you Mizuno once again, can't wait to wear this, oh, look at that, that is fly, looking fly, I got the stars on there, okay, and now let's dive into marathon training week 11, week 11, that's amazing, that just blows my mind, so here we go, here's the graph that I've been using, so we are at the, on the brink of the taper, so for me, I taper three weeks out from a peak race, like the Homburg marathon, now the DGR virtual marathon, so we're so close to the taper really coming into full effect, I will say though, I am gonna reduce my volume just a little bit this week, because, well, first of all, today's run 10 miles, 840 a mile, there it is on your screen in kilometers in the turbos, love those turbos, but I'm gonna reduce the volume in order to recover a little bit more from last week's 23-miler, and let me just clarify, I think I said this a couple days ago, but I just wanna be very clear, if I was getting ready for the Homburg marathon where I'm racing against elites, sub-elites, and trying to race really fast, I would not have done 23 miles at 540 a mile, just wanna for a long run, I just wanna make that clear, I was going out, because the Homburg marathon is off, I was loosening up my training just a little bit, meaning doing some fun things, like that was really fun to run 540 a mile for 23 miles, so, but when you're really trying to hit a race, a peak race at the right moment, you gotta really be careful not to run too hard, well, because I ran hard last week, I knew like my legs were gonna need some recovery time, I didn't know how much, and sure enough, today was the first day of Monday, so Thursday, Friday, Saturday, yeah, day five, my legs finally feel like they're starting to come back around, but, so I reduced my volume today, because in week 11, time trial week, which I'll get to in a second, I'm finally getting onto the track for the first intervals, now, I wanted to start the intervals last week, but again, it just didn't happen because of that 23-miler in the Nike Alpha Fly, next percent, so here is the other chart that I've been showing you with the Pyramid, so aerobic engine, tempos, and yes, thresholds, I'm actually crazy enough, but I'm actually, yeah, I'm sticking that long run from last week into the threshold category, like, I was going that fast, even though, especially at the beginning, like, I think I was hitting some 515s and 520s early on in that 23-miler, so, even though it was a long run, it was long, I'm putting it into the threshold category, absolutely, and then, of course, the intervals are beginning right now, and then tapering begins at the end of this week, so again, there's that chart, and again, back to the marathon training playlist that I gave a shout out to earlier, I go over this chart and the other chart in a lot more detail, in case you wanna go check out those blogs, and now for the time trial, oh, I'm so excited, so today's run, I was researching, of course, as I already mentioned, for the time trial, it's hard, I don't know if I found it, I don't know if that's gonna be the one, I don't know if it's gonna be the Platte River Trail, the Cherry Creek Trail, or maybe I find another piece of road, it's really difficult to find 13 miles of road that is not congested with too much traffic, you gotta be careful of traffic, obviously stop signs and stop lights, you don't wanna have to deal with, so anyway, I'm not dialed in yet to the Cherry Creek Trail, but either Saturday or Sunday, depending a little bit on the weather, depending a little bit on the legs, but this is going to be my tune-up race, which was going to be the race in Dallas, Texas, in Irving, Texas, but that's not happening, therefore, I'm doing this half marathon, I'm excited, and again, this is all part of, all right, to the mental side of marathon training week 11, there's a couple people that have commented on Strava saying, they're just staying home, and that's fine, and I get it in Italy, like Italy's in lockdown, France, I think I read, I think, that you can't leave your house or your apartment more than like 2K away from your apartment or your house, if you live in France, maybe you could give us an update down in the comments on what's happening on the ground, but anyway, there's different situations around the world, for me, I'm continuing on, like I've already explained, as far as marathon training, like I've already explained for the mental side, okay, and the normalcy, I think it's horrible what's happening around the world, however, if we overreact to what's happening around us, obviously social distancing, which we've all learned about in the last couple weeks is important, but if we overreact, in my opinion, for me, if I overreact, it's gonna make my mental state and physical state as well way off kilter, and I don't wanna go there, so I think for a lot of us, running is our outlet, it is our time to get away, it is our time to seek beauty, it is our time to go listen to the birds, it's our time to go listen to our favorite podcasts, it's our time to disconnect from the news, you know what I mean? So anyway, I'm continuing with this marathon journey and on the mental side, I'm just so glad that I am, but question of the day, how are you doing, okay? Open up, if you feel comfortable, like open up, we're here to support each other, that's like, how are you doing mentally? And maybe you're in Italy, maybe you're in China, maybe you're in a hard hit area with the coronavirus, but that is what this D'Amore global running family is all about, and we're supporting each other down in the comments, hopefully as best as possible, but also on Instagram, also on Strava, Facebook of course. So we're here for each other and I just wanna make that clear that, and again, like shout out to the race directors for dealing with this whole situation, like I wanna support their race directors as well, because I know they've gone through a lot in the last month and a half. So anyway, that's the question of the day, how are you doing mentally? Just let us know, okay? That's it for me for now, here in the studio. Again, shout out to Mizuno, I appreciate the support, I'll be sporting this, who knows, maybe tomorrow during the interval session on the track. Come back for that, okay everyone, that's it, all right? That's it, marathon training week 11, here we go. All right everyone, we're gonna toss it back to week 10, just last week, week 10 marathon training right there, if you haven't seen it, check it out right there, marathon training week 10 from seven days ago. All right everyone, seek beauty, work hard, and love each other. Thanks so much for being here, we'll see you tomorrow.