 Those are my lessons from this training block. It's really, really critical because, again, we don't know if New York City is going to happen. We don't know if anything's going to happen. Marathon training block lessons learned. But before we get to that, does anybody else feel just a little strange going out into public looking like this? That's like, I'm not going to rob the store. I promise, I promise. All right, everyone. Just getting back from running some errands. And I probably passed about three or four barbershops along the way. I'm just, I'm giving up. I don't know what to do with the hair. It's corona hair. You probably are dealing with corona hair as well. Yeah, so we're just going to deal with it together. All right, everyone. It's a big day on the blog. Man, all that work you put into your training blocks. And if you haven't seen the vlog from, I think it's been about 13, 14 months ago. I made a vlog all about how I go about the process of building my training blocks in a calendar year. So upper right hand corner, if you want to go learn more about how I set up. It could probably use a little freshening up because it has been over a year ago. But there's still some good info in that vlog from 20, I guess it would be early 2019. All right, so today, big day. Day three of resting the legs. I got to say, I still feel quite tired, which means on Sunday, when I did the marathon, my legs really had nothing. I was trying to dig, trying to dig. Nothing going, no energy, no pop, no nothing. Because usually on day three, after a race, when I'm resting, usually on day three, I start to feel a little better. But sure enough, just walking around, walking around the stores I was at, doing the errands, like nothing. The legs are like, we are not out of the woods yet. But today's vlog, absolutely critical for me, as I evaluate the past training blocks so that I can apply the lessons that I hopefully will learn and apply them to the next training block, which I'm not gonna announce yet. Probably next week, we'll break down the future. And that's the big question mark. For example, yesterday, Germany announced, the government announced in Germany that they are not going to allow groups larger than 5,000 people to gather in one place at once. Until, I think it was mid-October, which means the Berlin Marathon might, I don't know, like I don't think they've made a final decision yet, but that basically means the Berlin Marathon might not go forward. Now what lessons do I look for when reviewing a training block? So definitely some positives, but also yes, it's important in my opinion to look for some drawbacks as well, or some negatives, some actions that I took. I made my decision to go that route in my training and they ended up not working. But I like to start with the positives, all right, glass half full here. So, first off, question number one that I asked myself after every training block is, did I enjoy the process? Okay, what do I mean? The process of training, the process of pain, the process of going out into the freezing temperatures in January and February, the process of waking up early and running before, like you know, you have to sacrifice if you want to train at a decent, you know, at a high level or a decent level to do well on race day. So that is question number one that I asked myself, did I enjoy the process? And I must say, I did enjoy the process, this last training block, but it was, probably like all of you, it was much more difficult knowing that Hamburg was off the table, everything was off the table. So I think, but the lesson from this is that now, when we get the virus taken care of, I don't know when it's gonna happen, you know, maybe it is 2021, but we can heed the lessons from these strange times and apply them to those future training blocks and be like, gosh, this is, you know, quote unquote, easy mentally because now I have a physical starting line to show up at whenever that might be. So anyway, that's question number one that I asked myself, did I enjoy the process? Okay, question number two, here we go. Did I meet my racing goals? Remember, I set out and I had five racing goals for the DGR virtual race. And so that's critical, like at least as runners and competitive, like, you know, we're all competitive in different ways, different ability levels. Maybe you're trying to finish top three in your age group. Maybe you're trying to beat your 5K time in 2020 from 2017, whatever dream you're chasing down, we all have different goals that we're working towards. So I did not reach my goals and that's okay. Now at some point I am gonna break down a little bit more the 107 half that I ran, which I'm very pleased with, but anyway, the DGR virtual race didn't go off quite as planned and that's okay. But that is question number two that I asked myself because, you know, I think for runners, it's that competitive spirit that in my opinion makes this sport so unbelievably exciting and unique. Okay, that's point number two. And point number three that I like to ask myself after a training block is what volume levels of training? Huh, huh, hold on, hold on. I need to make a new poster, but hold on. What volume levels of training and workouts will I take from this training block and apply to the future? Okay, what lessons did I learn from the actual physical training? And just to get real specific here on these workouts, I do believe that I will move forward with the 15 by 1K workout. Now, I don't think I was able to, let's say reap the benefits of that workout as much as I would have liked because you know why, because my legs being tired, but still I really like that workout. And then, man, oh man, that half marathon time trial three weeks before, which again, I'm gonna talk about in a minute in the drawbacks, but overall that workout, which was going to be a tune-up race, really, really gave me a ton of confidence. So those are the three questions that I ask myself after every training block. Did I enjoy the process? Did I meet my race day goals? Okay, and what workouts and volume levels will I apply to the future? Now moving on to the three drawbacks from the previous training block, gotta get the poster back out. So I do, yeah, I guess, you know, regret might be the right word, not taking the down week. Okay, now I didn't know I was gonna be running 50 miles, you know, two weeks ago, but this down week, I must say in, and I think in the future, okay, this is again, lessons for the future. I had it here right around mile, sorry, week seven of the training block, a 14 week training block. I think I would have bumped it to, let's say week eight, maybe week nine of the training block. I think it would have been too early, but I ended up skipping it all together. I think it was actually gonna happen the week of the Olympic trials when I was down in Atlanta. That was going to be the down week. And again, didn't know I was doing the 50 miler, but looking back, I think that's one drawback. So lesson learned here, 14 week training block. I do believe, all right, for New York City, let's hope it's happening in November. I think everybody, I'm going to go from a 14 week training block to at least 15 and possibly 16 weeks. Why? I'm gonna add one week to the beginning of the training block where I can do low volume, so like 15 miles for the week, just like really easy. So at the beginning, so that'll take up one of the weeks. And then again, that second week, extra week in the training block will be the down week. Okay, so again, just to make sure that the legs and the body is not getting too tired before race day approaches. Okay, that's drawback number one. Drawback number two is the big asterisk on the training block, the coronavirus. That's a big drawback for everybody, but the big drawback is that probably for many of you out there, the gym situation. I gotta say, I could feel it in my legs. I could feel it in my form. I tried to do as best as I could in my house. I tried to do it in my backyard as much as I could, but it wasn't the same, everybody. I was really, really dedicated. You saw me in January and most of February in the gym doing everything I was doing, plyometrics, running form drills, getting into the pool, all these little things to keep the body healthy and happy and I missed it. I don't know about you, but I really, really missed the gym. So that was, I would say, a pretty major drawback for this last training block, not being able to use the tools that are present there at the gym. I could feel it, I could feel it. All right, that was drawback number two and drawback number three. Again, I guess this connects to the coronavirus as well, but going to Dallas for the tune-up race three weeks before April 19th, that was the goal, that was gonna be the tune-up race. Okay, I was, nobody was traveling, I was unable to go to Dallas, so I did the time trial here in Denver. It went really well, 107.20 for the half, but now what I'm thinking, everyone, is I think, and again, this is why I like to coach myself is because I can tinker with the timing. I'm all about timing and arriving at the top of the pyramid, arriving as fit, fresh, and healthy as possible at the top of the pyramid and I think that for the tune-up race, moving forward, for example, for New York City, that half marathon tune-up race will be further out. So instead of three weeks out, I'm actually thinking four or five weeks out. I know, and maybe I'm being a little bit influenced by how my legs feel from the 50 mile run, but just put in it, and I need to, I'll do a little more thinking about it, a little more introspection on how the overall block played out, but I am now leaning toward a month out or maybe even five weeks out from the peak race to do a tune-up race. All right, so I am putting that in the quote-unquote drawback category because I think Sunday I was just really tired from a lot of different things. Again, big caveat with the 50, but so anyway, that is lesson number three. Those are my three drawbacks. The rest week, I wish I would have taken it, not getting into the gym because of the coronavirus, which basically just affirms that the gym is critical for me and feeling healthy and in control of the body as I'm running, and then number three, sorry, that was number two, and number three is I do think that tune-up race is gonna be bumped, okay? So here we go, question of the day. What did you learn from this past training block? And listen, there was 3,000 runners in the DGR virtual races. So I know there's a lot of people that kinda wrapped up their training block on Sunday or Saturday of this past weekend. So let us know what was one lesson you learned or if you wanna give a positive and a drawback or a negative that you maybe implemented into the training block that was really great and maybe not so great, that would be awesome. All right, there you go. Those are my lessons from this training block. It's really, really critical because again, we don't know if New York City is gonna happen. We don't know if anything's gonna happen, but if it does, it's good to be prepared for the future. All right, everyone, DGR strong. Thanks for being here. Thanks for watching. Hope you have a great day. Tomorrow, when you're watching this is day four of resting. We'll see how the legs feel and bottom line. I think I tweeted out about an hour ago. Sitting around and it's kinda nice. Sitting around and it's kinda nice. All right, everyone, we're gonna toss it back too. I think when I implemented, well, I'll find the vlog at the beginning of the last training block where I really laid out the game plan for the past training block. So that'll be there in case you wanna go dig into it deeper. Thanks for being here. Thanks for watching. Onward and upward, everybody. Onward and upward. All right, see beauty, work hard and love each other. See you tomorrow.