PM: 6 - yes, dropping .5 miles today will make me run faster tomorrow. But really running these days is a chore and mostly just to burn calories. I need to get back the fire but i don't know how. I am racing tomorrow but how can I do well without really wanting it? Probably wanting it doesnt help me very much at the race particularly. Racing is about taking the pain. No amount of desire will change my pain tollerance or allow me to break through the pain or something. I am thinking about running the 5k instead of the mile because I am afraid of the mile right now. I will leave the decision for the last minute.
Brown track club mini meet (1 Miles) 00:04:53, Place overall: 1, Place in age division: 1
Easy Miles
Marathon Pace Miles
Threshold Miles
VO2 Max Miles
Crosstraining miles
Total Miles
4.00
0.00
2.00
1.00
0.00
7.00
Splits: 73, 75 (thought I sped up but guess not), 73, 71 (including the extra 9 meters). Except for the 2nd lap I think it was paced pretty well. I think my problem in the 2nd lap was that I was behind this guy who slowed way down and I waited too long to pass him. Overall I am pretty happy. Tied my PR. Ran it smart. Ran all out. Can't ask for much more than that. Felt good enough to pace a friend in a 20min 5k after a while. Unfortunately she hurt her hip and had to drop a little after 2 miles. The 6:24 pace from lane 2 felt easy despite having done the mile only 20min before. I am feeling good about this half marathon next week. My only real goal will be sub 1:23 but I will go out at 6:15 pace and see how I feel. With the half marathon I feel like as long as I keep it comfortable and smooth I should be able to hold that till 10 and maybe speed up a tad towards the end.
15 mile trail run on the pachaug trail in arcadia. It was pretty wet and a bit snowy in places but I managed. aprox 2:45 min. (11 min pace lol I forgot how slow trail running is). I turned around when my gps said 7.5 miles but I accidentally turned it off for a while so I don't know exact time. I didn't take food or water on this run but that is about as long as I would want to be out there without it even in cool temps.
PM: 10.5 including 4x5x400m w/ 100m reovery between reps and 400m between sets.
Times:
81, 81, 84, 83, 84
80, 82, 82, 83, 79
77, 80, 80, 79, 79
77, 76, 76, 76, 71!
Good workout. Worked into it slowly and at the end really only thought I had a 75 left in me but ran 71 with a lot of traffic on the track (like 5 groups of guys jogging who refused to stay out of lane 1--it was on the indoor track and this was a problem almost the whole time. Averaged 79.5 not shabby considering the 83s and 84s in there. Thats 5 miles of 5:18 pace just broken up a lot lol.
AM: 4.25 - hurting. aerobically fine but my hams are shot and the rest of my legs dont want to compensate.
PM: 6.5 still hurting. This was the first time this season that I was able to really feel a workout or race though so it is probably good. I want to peak before my boards on april 25th because I will basically be forced to not run consistently for 2 months after that (Ob/Gyn rotation is first for me and it involves 12 hour days, some night and weekend call, and a difficult exam at the end for which I will have to use my 'leisure time' to study.
today and tomorrow are all about recovering from the 3 hard days before. Thursday I hope I am feeling good enough for a tempo and saturday I will do only 5 easy in preparation for the half marathon on sunday.
AM: 4.25 Feeling much better. Still a little weak in the left ham. Will do the tempo today. Enjoying writing sentences with implied noun or even noun and verb.
PM: 8m including 8k in 29:46 on the track in a hell of a wind. It was harder this week than 2 weeks ago but I think it was all due to the wind. Still, not shabby at all being sub 6 pace. Splits were 6:11, 6:05, 5:56, 5:47, 5:46. I doubt that I will be sub 6 pace for threshold on the road when the 5 milers start down in warren, RI. The road is not the track but we will see. I will not race the clock unless it is very close. I do like the sound of 29:XX 5 mile tempos. Of course I could also make the pace more even which might make it easier.
AM: 4.25 Felt pretty good. A little aerobically tired but nothing abnormal for a week with this many miles.
PM: 6.5 Lentils caught up to me at the wrong time and made this run rather unpleasant lol. But once I got rid of 'em I felt good again. I can hit 80 with only 1 run tomorrow as a slight taper for the half marathon lol.
I have decided, against my better judgement, to shoot for sub 1:20 on sunday. And even more so against my better judgement, to make this goal public lol. That is 6:06 pace for the half marathon. It is folly, and I know it. But who cares about 1:21 or 1:22? If I blow up and run a 1:26 who cares? But a 1:19:59 would be glorious. My plan is to go out just a bit easy--6:10-16 pace and then pick it up to about 6:04 pace (the mid miles of this course are slightly downhill usually with a slight tailwind) and try to hold that through 10. Miles 10-12 of this course are slightly tough usually into the wind and a slight hill. I will try to maintain or just not lose too much and then go for broke in the last mile. The key will be relaxing.
The reasons that I think I might have a chance at sub 1:20 are as follows:
1. 5:55 paced 5 miler in training was easy, very negative split, would have been more like 5:50 pace even split
2. 5:59 paced 5 miler in extreme wind. Wasn't easy but I wasn't tapered and it was very negatively split as well. It would have been more like 5:55 pace had I ran it evenly.
3. Based on these times in training, I feel like doubling the distance at these paces in a race situation would be reasonable--not a certainty, but not crazy either.
4. A 60:00 10 miler is of equal or greater performance to sub 1:20 half--meaning that anyone capable of a sub 60 10 miler should be capable of a sub 1:20 half.
Here are the reasons that I am being stupid
1. The road is NOT the track.
2. 3min 44sec PR? PR by 17sec/mile? In 5 months? Unlikely.
3. I have only done 1 run over 10 miles since before christmas.
4. I have already run too much this week. A proper taper is out of my reach at this point. If I do 4 miles tomorrow and carbo loading is my best bet.
Like I said before--it is not likely that I make it, but why not try? 6:06 pace seems pretty easy on the track for me right now, but will it on the road, at mile 8? 10? and 12?!?
5.75, cause I couldn't stand being so close and not hitting 80 for the week. Felt good. Looks like good weather for the race tomorrow. I looked up the course elevation profile and it isn't just flat. And there is that wind in the last few miles. So there are my pre-excuses (besides not being in the shape I need to be to hit the time I am shooting for lol). Here goes nothin'.
Unofficial time 1:18:45 -- exactly 6 min pace... exactly. And 10 mile split was 59:47.
EDIT: Official time 1:18:47
Yes. It is true. My gps even said it was 13.24 but I probably just cut the tangents poorly. You had to to work with a pack in the wind. I will get the splits off my gps later, but it was pretty much 5:55 pace the whole way except for a few hills which slowed me down. I would say the course is fast, but not blazing. There were at least 4 significant hills... Im talking 1/2 mile long hills--the worst of which is in miles 12 and into 13. I do much better with rolling because I can recover on each downhill. I would have run at least 30 seconds faster on a truly flat course. But the weather was almost perfect. It was high 40's and I actually went shirtless after the first 3 miles. The wind was significant but was actually the opposite direction than it usually is. Working with a pack really decreased its affect on me. So miles 3-9 which are slightly downhill had the headwind instead of the first 3 and last 3 which is usually the case. That was really good for my confidence because I was hurting at 10 miles though thought I could maintain pretty well. Knowing that I had quite a bit of time in the bank and a tailwind to boot really helped psychologically.
So, based on the mcmillan running calculator, my mile and half marathon are almost perfectly equal performances. 1:18:45 equates to a 4:55 mile. And other equivalent times are 17:02 for 5k ouch, and 28:14 for 5miles another ouch. I would really like to break 17 and 28 this season. Let's hope I am up to the task.
Now the question is: why am I so slow for the mile? My speed isn't that bad. I can pop off 70-72's pretty easily in workouts. And my aerobic capacity is obviously very strong compared to last year. What is wrong with me?
PM: 8 Felt really good despite the race effort yesterday.
Today was the last exam of my 2nd year of med school. Now I have a 38 day study period to prepare for the boards. After that 3rd year starts and my running will really suffer for 6months-a year because of the tough schedule.
PM: 8.75 including hill workout - 4xdoyle hill (just short of 800m with 250ft vertical so a steady rise) in 3:14, 3:14, 3:07, 3:03 wow didn't think I would neg split this workout at all let alone by so much. Then did 4 longish sprints up the same hill with a min or so rest in between.
St. Patricks day 5k (3.1 Miles) 00:17:19, Place overall: 7, Place in age division: 6
Easy Miles
Marathon Pace Miles
Threshold Miles
VO2 Max Miles
Crosstraining miles
Total Miles
3.10
0.00
0.00
7.35
0.00
10.45
Edit: official time 17:19, 6 second PR. Still not great but better than I thought. The finish line must have been not where I thought it was. There were like 3 or 4 mats so I thought it was under the last one.
HAHA best thing is I was 7th out of, get this, 2100 lol. Of course the winner did go 14:25 but wow that is a lot of slow people.
Ugh. I just felt bad right from the warmup. But I may know why now. I think it might be due to the bendryl that I took last night. And I also took benedryl the night before both of the mile races. But I didn't the night before the half marathon. I think it might be a risidual effect.
Splits were 5:24, 5:41, 5:35, 44 (died horribly in the last 800 meters totally rigging by the end).
Mark my words. I will split 5k faster than this in my 5miler on thursday and it will feel easy. I know I am in better shape than this. EDIT: Now that the official time is in I take back this statement. I may yet split the final 5k faster but since I plan to negative split the 5 mile race I will come close but will not be faster than this time. I am aiming to break 28 which is 5:36 pace. I will go out closer to 5:40-45 then ratchet it down and if all goes well I should be able to close sub 5:30.
PM: 6.5 Feeling yesterday's 5k a bit. No wonder though with how long I was rigging. For a few minutes after the race, the amount of lactic acid I had built up made me feel like I had lifted weights earlier.
I am rethinking racing this thursday. There is a 5k this saturday that I want to do and since the thursday race is weekly, I can race that whenever. So I am probably just going to tempo thursday and race saturday and maybe race next thursday.
PM: 7.5 added on a mile to my normal loop to run to the gorcery store to pick up something I forgot earlier when I went--sugar free syrup (the kind made with sugar alcohol, not the gross splenda sweetened kind). I basically have been living off of oatmeal and oatbran lately and this makes it so much better. I put frozen fruit in it, a bit of soy milk (because it tastes creamier than regular whole milk and has less calories), maybe some nuts, a bit of sugar free syrup, some unproccessed wheat bran (healthy and has that undefinable nutty bran flavor). By the time I am done adding stuff it is twice the volume that it started at lol.
PM: 7.75 including 4x1mile with 200m recovery in 5:31, 5:35, 5:35, 5:49 :( It was simply too fast for that much rest. Maybe with 3min rest I could have done it but with only 60-90seconds recovery it was too much. The last one I simply gave up on. I could have run another 5:35 but it would be racing. I could have run 5:40 with hard effort but I decided that the first 3 were too fast anyway so I just made it tempo pace (not that that was easy at that point). The first 3 alone though predicts a significantly better 5k than I have. Most people can run 3-5 seconds faster pace in a 5k than they can handle for 3 mile repeats on 60-90sec recovery.
PM: 8 including 5 at the Red Rooster Ramble in 29:31. It was just a tempo because I want to race the 5k this saturday. I came in 2nd with this time which would have won almost any of them last year. But this dude came down from mass. He is training for sub 2:50 at boston and ran a 28:30. His pacing was hillarious though. He gained 250m on me in the first 1.5 miles and then stayed exactly there for the rest of the race. I ran it pretty even. 5:52, 5:50, 5:48, then decided I was pretty tired and was running darn fast so I backed off a bit with 5:56 and 5:58. It is not the track for sure, but it is a darn fast course. It would be nice if they cleared off the salt/sand from the sidewalks. Parts were like running on a firm beach. I don't really understand how I went just 7 seconds slower per mile for the whole half marathon (which was hillier lol). Maybe I am wearing myself down racing so much? I am not heavier than I was for the half. I did gain some weight towards the end of feb but I am back to 154 now which I think isn't too bad. I could be skinnier but I don't think I could diet and do hard workouts at the same time and stay healthy. I will taper a little bit tomorrow and see what I can put together for the 5k this weekend. I don't think it is a fast course though.
