On July 28 I ran two 25-minute steady state blocks. The first one came in at 6:52 per mile. The second one came in at 7:36. That is not a workout. That is one good block and then twenty-five minutes of damage control.

On August 4 I ran the same workout. 6:26 and 6:31.

Nine days apart, 26 seconds per mile faster, and the second block held. That is the whole steady state block in two data points, and everything below is the explanation.

What Steady State Is Supposed To Do

Jason Koop coaches ultrarunners and wrote Training Essentials for Ultrarunning, which is where this entire 50k plan came from. I reviewed the book earlier in this build and then wrote up how I turned it into an actual schedule, so I will keep this part short.

Koop's block periodization runs intervals first, then tempo, then steady state, then endurance, then taper. Each block builds on the last and each one has a specific job.

The steady state block's job is duration at an uncomfortable pace. Not hard. Uncomfortable. The tempo block asked me to hold 6:30 for twelve minutes at a stretch. This block asked for the same pace for twenty-five, then again after five minutes of recovery. Same effort, roughly double the duration, five weeks later.

For a 50k with 5,020 feet of climbing, that is the more relevant skill. Grindstone will not ask me to run at 6:00 pace. It will ask me to hold a moderate effort for a long time while my legs get progressively worse at it.

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The Five Sessions

Weekly volume across the block went 47.6 miles, then a down week at 34.2, then 58.6, then 60.6. The 34-mile week was vacation and it was meant to be light. The two biggest weeks of this build came directly after it.

July 28 Came Apart In Two Ways

I want to be clear about the first session because the tidy version of this post would skip it.

I went out targeting a 7:00 pace and ran the first block at 6:52. Eight seconds fast does not sound like much. In the humid air it was enormous.

The second block is where it fell apart, and the heat was only half of it. My stomach turned a few minutes in. I stopped and walked, tried to pick the pace back up, lost it again, walked some more, and eventually got going once things settled. Two minutes of that block, give or take, I spent walking. The 7:36 average includes all of it.

So the honest read is two problems stacked on each other. I banked eight seconds a mile I could not afford, in conditions that made the bill come due faster, and my gut chose that moment to register an opinion. I still do not know which one was the cause and which was the consequence.

Two days later I ran shorter blocks at 6:30 and 6:41 and held them. Same week, same legs, cooler morning, no stomach trouble.

The Treadmill Did The Climbing

On August 6 I ran two 20-minute blocks at 12% incline with a 10-minute recovery at -2% in between.

Forty minutes of continuous climbing with no descent to break it up. There is no road near me that gives me that, which is the entire reason the treadmill is in this plan.

What stuck with me was how low my heart rate stayed. Lower than a hard steady state block on the road, and it still came out a 7 out of 10 for effort. The legs were the limiter, not the lungs. Grindstone is going to ask the same question for a lot longer.

The problem underneath it has not gone away. I put in 3,130 feet of vertical the week of July 20 and then almost nothing for two weeks while the steady state work took over. That is the tradeoff of block periodization when you live in a place with no hills: the block you are in eats the thing you cannot afford to lose. The treadmill sessions are the patch, not the fix.

The Last One, With An Asterisk

The closing session of the block was August 12. Two 25-minute blocks again, 6:36 and 6:43. Slower than August 4 by 10 seconds a mile, and I will take it, because my stomach was off from the warmup on.

Not bad enough to stop. Just there the whole time, uncomfortable in the background, the thing you keep checking on while you are trying to think about pace. Both blocks held anyway.

That is the second time in this block my gut has shown up uninvited during a hard session. On July 28 it cost me two minutes of walking. This time it cost me nothing except attention. I would rather it stopped happening than keep improving.

The Long Runs Are Where The Race Is

Two long runs bracket this block and they say more than the workouts do.

July 31: 16.02 miles, 7:50 pace, average heart rate 131, RPE 5.
August 7: 17.05 miles, 7:54 pace, average heart rate 131, RPE 4.

One mile longer at the same heart rate and it felt easier. Inside the August 7 run, my heart rate averaged 128 over the first six miles and 132 over the last eleven. Four beats of drift across seventeen miles in August. Last summer that number would have been double.

Both runs were in the Saucony Peregrine 16, which is what I plan to race in. They now have 49 miles on them, which is worth thinking about given the race is 32.5.

Fueling, Tested Twice

Same plan both days: one serving of Tailwind, two Maurten Gel 160s, one Maurten Gel 100, water throughout. That is 130 grams of carbohydrate, which works out to roughly 62 grams per hour on July 31 and 58 on August 7.

Nothing went wrong, which is the point. Two runs over two hours at the same carbohydrate rate with no stomach complaints and no fade in the last three miles. That is a data point, not a conclusion, but it is the data point I wanted.

The gap is that 58 grams an hour for two hours proves very little about six hours on a mountain. The rate has to go up and the duration has to go up, and the only way to find out whether my stomach agrees is to test it.

Friday

This week I go out for three hours. Two servings of Tailwind, six Maurten Gel 100s, one of them caffeinated. It will be the longest run of this build by a wide margin and the first time I run the full kit start to finish.

Two things would make it a success. Holding the pace I am targeting, and finishing with my stomach in the same condition it started.

I have no strong prediction about either. That is the point of a rehearsal.

Next week's post is what happened.