Exploring Milwaukee's Estabrook Park, Boring Treadmill Miles, & Ladder Down Running Intervals (Half Marathon Training - Week #4 Recap)

In this weekly blog series, I plan to share a training recap as I prepare for Brew City 1/2 Marathon in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It will include an overview of my training plan with the good, the bad, & the ugly which every runner undoubtedly experiences along the way. Enjoy and let me know if you have any feedback or thoughts based on your experience.

Tuesday, January 24th:

The sun was shining, which is rare, and I was eager to get my mid-afternoon run in. Once again, a work break was needed and I quickly snuck out to knock out 4-miles and 5 strides.

Knowing my neighborhood wouldn’t be the ideal spot for strides, I opted to turn this run into a stride sandwich. This includes 2-miles easy to the local park/greenway, 5 strides at the most convenient straightaway based on the mileage, and then 2-miles easy home. 

Although I don’t normally put strides in the middle of a run since it tends to break things up a little awkwardly, they were enjoyable. Truthfully, this order would probably work very well for my runners who have trouble maintaining easy pace without running in that zone 4 “no-mans land.” The strides aren’t long enough to truly spike the heart rate and it could act as a quick break between easier miles to reset and really stay true to the pace recommendation. Noted!

I started from home in Riverwest and headed down Humbodlt to East Capitol Drive. Because I didn’t really have a plan for where I was going, low traffic on Capitol Drive allowed me to hop over a usually busy road into Estabrook Park. From what I hear, this is a nice park to run. I’ve only visited once to walk the dog in the first few weeks after moving to Milwaukee. I was glad for the change of scenery, somewhat blue skies, and nice path that blessed this run. It’s funny how you quickly notice the sun shining when the norm this time of year is grey, winter weather. 

After getting 2-miles into the run, I walked for 2-minutes to allow the heart rate to fully recover, and then knocked out 5 strides. Like I mentioned before, a stride is a quick acceleration from a standstill or walk to a faster pace and then gradually decelerating back down. These are NEVER all out sprints and I think that’s where most runners go wrong. Since they are only 20-seconds of hard running, I was able to hit 6:00-6:30 pace with plenty of recovery on the 40-second slow walk break. I actually have strides pre-programmed as a workout in my Garmin so I can be present in the run and use the beeping countdown and vibration to guide me on when to start and stop. Running fast and staring at your wrist is not advised!

Thursday calls for ladder down speedwork and then a 7-mile long run on Saturday. Hopefully the snow doesn’t prove to be too challenging this week as some bad weather will roll in with single digit temperatures. Finally winter in Wisconsin?

Friday, January 27th:

Too many excuses the last few days… I should’ve gotten this run in yesterday but I didn’t manage my time well with the webinar. I hosted a webinar on ‘The In-Season Strength Training Formula for Runners’ last night. You can click here to check it out for yourself!

All day long I was trying to catch up and knock out a ton of work but wasn’t motivated to get out and run. It was cold, rainy, I was tired… you know all the b.s. excuses we normally tell ourselves. 

There is a water issue in the neighborhood and the city turned off the water completely to the house in order to fix the problem. Although it was a big inconvenience, I had to pee and decided to head to Planet Fitness to use the bathroom and jump on the treadmill.

Today’s run called for 4-miles with Ladder Down Intervals. Truthfully, it’s a nice treadmill workout, and with the roads still pretty lousy, it ended up being a smart choice overall.

The workout looked something like…

Warm-Up:

  • 5-minutes of fitness walking

  • 10-minutes of running @ easy pace

Workout:

  • 5-minutes of hard running with 1-minute walk recovery

  • 4-minutes of hard running with 1-minute walk recovery

  • 3-minutes of hard running with 1-minute walk recovery

  • 2-minutes of hard running with 1-minute walk recovery

  • 1-minute of hard running with 1-minute walk recovery

Cool Down:

  • 10-minutes of running @ easy pace

  • 5-minutes of fitness walking

What I like the most about this workout is that it’s progressive. It allows you to gradually pick-up the pace over the course of the workout. Each segment as the time decreases, the pace increases. It allowed me to hit a wide range of paces from 12:00 all the way down to 8:00. 

As I reflect on my Garmin I probably didn’t push hard enough. I usually like to get into zone 5 for a short period of time to challenge that upper limit of the threshold range (88-92% of maximum heart rate) but it looks more like an equal balance of zone 3 and zone 4. I guess that’s somewhat a good sign since my heart rate was a bit unpredictable last week while being sick and things seem to be settling down and responding nicely.

Perfect timing for more mileage in the weeks to come and some faster speedwork in the form of Fartleks. Stay tuned!

Sunday, January 29th:

The roads were pretty sketchy today due to 6-inches of snow last night. I elected to hit the treadmill which was a task just driving the one mile to Planet Fitness.

First thing this morning I took the dog to Lake Park as part of a reconnaissance mission. The goal was to get her moving in the snow while seeing what the roads and park looked like. It wasn’t pretty…

On the way home from the park I did have to swerve in order not to kill 3 runners. I guess some people are doing it but I didn’t have my Yax Trax so I decided to be err on the side of caution.

The 7-mile run was pretty uneventful. I locked into easy/conversational pace and watched the many screens viewable to pass time. The shows ranged from college basketball, x-games skiing and snowboarding, to HGTV home remodeling. Not interesting but not awful either!

Since these treadmills usually stop at 60-minutes, I purposely stopped for 60-seconds after 40-minutes to restart the treadmill as if it was a new workout. I’ve been surprised in the past by the treadmill automatically switching to cool down mode and didn’t want to deal with that.

I listened to The Run Smarter podcast with guest Rich Willy. I’ve been a fan of Rich's for years as he’s a physical therapist and researcher that publishes tons of great information around running, injuries, and strength training. The topic was glute activation myths which is a great topic from an intelligent researcher with tons of misconceptions.

A new pair of Yak Trax will come on Tuesday and I’ll continue looking for local paths/trails that are better cared for. I saw Facebook posts from other runners who were on the Oak Leaf Trail and that looked halfway decent. My struggle is always learning the lay of the land when moving to a new location when the weather is unpredictable.

Thanks for following along this week! If you have any questions or want to talk about creating an individualized running and injury prevention plan for you, click the ‘Healthy Running Program’ tab above and fill out the form.

Onward to week 5!

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Fartlek Speedwork, Long Run Through Shorewood and Milwaukee, & Dreadmill Running (Half Marathon Training - Week #5 Recap)

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MKE Lakefront Running, Snowy Conditions, & New Shoes from Performance Running Outfitters (Half Marathon Training - Week #3 Recap)