There is this classic 11.2 mile loop through a state park just 3 miles from me that I have never done so I did it today. I usually run the trails in the same park, but I wanted to see what this road loop was like because all of the runners around here talk about it. It was very nice or at least much nicer than any other road running I could imagine with very few cars through forests with a few vistas along the way. It was very hilly, and I tried to take it easy, but I did it in 1:26:27 (7:51 pace) so not too bad, but probably too fast for the kind of hills this place has.
Workout with Ted today. It was a bit depressing as he is so fast and yet I am running about 2x his volume right now. He did 4x800m and I did 6x800m. We started with a 2 mile warmup and some stretching. Then we started the workout. He held about 4:40-4:45 pace and I started out too fast hitting 5:10 pace for the first one and then progressing to 5:32 pace by the end. He finished each one with nearly the entire straight away ahead of me. Then he would do the recovery lap at nearly 8 minute pace. I am used to barely a shuffle for recovery. We went at the line, but he would accelerate for about 30m leading up to the start which increased his lead on me. It was 90 degrees and I felt it. We met a guy named whim (sp?) who is closer to my pace but still faster than me (his 10k pace is my 5k pace). Hopefully we can meet up for some runs and workouts and he won't utterly embarrass me like Ted does. After talking to whim for a while, we went for a 3.2 mile cooldown. The heat hugely affects my times on workouts. If I had done a longer workout I am sure I would have gotten slower and slower. But at this point in my training I don't think it is about maximizing VO2max time/volume but getting the miles in and occasionally letting my legs/lungs/heart feel some speed to not lose it. And I haven't lost it. My last 200m I dropped 32 and the first 100m of that I really didn't feel like I was going fast, I was trying to steadily accelerate through the 200 (my last 800 I hit 5:20 pace again because of the kick).
Same route as yesterday but fairly fast. Didn't mean to, just started out at an 8:20 pace and over 2 miles settled in to a 7 flat pace. Averaged 7:18 pace for the run and it really wasn't that stressful. I had to work, but could do any breathing pattern. I know when I am going past easy when I can't maintain a 3 strides in 3 strides out breathing pattern. At least thats what daniels tells me, but he also says that my easy pace should be around 7:20 which on a daily basis I think is not right.
Went to the Sipsey Wilderness area in the Bandhead National Forest 1hr south of where I live in alabama. Tried to do an 11.5 mile loop but since the trails were not marked I just did 2 out and back sections. I missed the first turn because some people were camping at the trail junction and had tents over the diverging trail so I didn't see it. Trail was very poorly maintained but had some awesome technical parts and some bluffs and waterfalls that were mostly dry now. Because of getting lost and bushwacking a bit because of the horrible trail it took 2hr 8min.
6 easy miles on grass with Wim, a new guy I am running with who is a 16:10 5k guy on 45 miles/week. I hate it when people are faster than I am who don't work as hard as I do. But it happens a lot. I was pushing it just a bit because it was early which I am not used to. The heat is really getting serious. Even at 8am this morning it was almost 90 degrees.
AM: 3 - ran to work because my sister needed my car. I am thinking about making this week a cut back week. I have been at 70mpw for 6 weeks now and although it is doable I wonder if it might be better to take one week at 50-60 and then get back to higher mileage. I definitely want to do some tempo work this week because I didn't do any planned tempo last week.
PM: 11.5 easy felt good. Felt like I might bonk because of an early lunch but after the 3 home I went inside and downed a can full of pear juice and it held me pretty strong throughout the rest of the run.
pm: .5 up, 2x2miles+2k at tempo pace 5:42 pace, 5:44 pace, and 5:45 pace respectively 3 min rests in between then 3 miles warm down on my way home
I was pretty happy about this workout. I did it indoors and again I was surprised at how fast I went. I started a bit too fast but held pace fairly well. I am virtually certain that this workout indicates just sub 17 for 5k on a cold day on a flat course. Sometime soon I am going to make a PR progression chart to better see when I have improved quickly and figure out what I was doing a lot of then and the few months before.
8.5 on the percy warner park horse trails. I did it at a crawl and in the last .5 miles I heard some people behind me gaining. Nobody has ever passed me on this route, so I had to hold them off. I barely made it to my turn without them passing me. I got a look at them as they went by and I felt a lot better because they were definitely college runners.
12 miles of trails and 3 miles of dirt road in mammoth caves national park. If any of you venture out there I suggest to get some serious bug spray. I have never had a problem with bugs on a run before, but these things were massive (same size as horse flies or bigger, almost cicada sized) and no running speed could drop them. They finally left us when we got far enough away from water.
First day off since flying home for spring break. This was on purpose. I have been at 70mpw for 6-7 weeks now and I am taking a cut back week. I am also changing my training strategy a bit. I am going to start doing a 3 week high mileage 1 week cut back schedule. My high weeks will be 70-80 and my low weeks will be 40-50. I think that it will be better both physically and mentally. I have 15 weeks including this one until my fall marathon (cape cod) and here is what I plan mileage wise.
40
70 70 70 40-50
80 70 70 40-50
80 70 80 40-50
70 30
And then the marathon is on the sunday after that week. It is a bit more than a 1 week taper because I will have taken a cut back week 3 weeks before the marathon. But I hate tapering. I am going to be trail racing or racing long on the road most weeks so that will count as 1 workout. I want to continue going to the thursday night 5 mile races to do as tempos. So my VO2max work should be tuesday. My long run is a tough one for weeks that I will be racing. I am torn between saying that a half marathon race is worth an 18-20 mile easy run and doing the long run anyway. I could try to take long cool downs for my races but that would be difficult but probably good for me. With a 2 mile warmup and 3 mile cooldown a 13 mile race turns into an 18 mile long run with a fair amount of sub marathon pace effort. On weekends that I don't race I will definitely do a long trail run of 18-22 miles. Another question is should I do workouts on my cutback weeks? I will definitely at least do some striders during my easy runs those weeks.
splits were 5:37, 5:39, 5:39, 2:43 It was hot and I didn't want to hurt myself on my cut back week. Its a little sad because the heat put me near where I think my 3 mile tempo pace in cold weather should be now (5:42-45). I thought about not doing the workout but its difficult for me to not run hard pretty frequently.
I am out in san francisco visiting some of my undergrad computer science friends. Ran with the man who got me into running in the first place. It was good. And the weather is great here. The high today is like 75. This is the first time I wore a shirt running in a while. Maybe I should do my residency out here. Many of my best friends live here and the weather is great for running year around. It is mostly flat but there are mountains within fairly easy driving distance. If there are plenty of trails I am pretty much sold.
12 miles around percy warner park on the roads. The trip to california was fun, but the flight back was horrible and made me miss my run yesterday. I got delayed twice and ended up home 5 hours after my initial schedule said. I loath the nashville weather. It is just coming into its own for the summer with today's 97 and 80% humidity. I waited till as late as I could to run and the start of the run was 93 and the end was 89. And with the humidity sweat hardly does anything except collect in your shoes, shorts, and sometimes gets so much in your eyes you have to pour water over them to stop the sting. I know that sports drinks dont have as much salt as sweat does because I know they dont burn the eyes the same way that sweat does (although perhaps its something like uric acid in sweat that does that, hmmm). Anyway, im pretty much counting the days until I am at least up in providence with slightly better temps and much less humidity.
Ran an unplanned tempoish run. Was with ted and despite the 92 degree start and tons of humidity we hit a few 7's to start off and then got a bit faster towards the end. Finished at around 6:45 pace.
I did another workout with my pathetic group. I should have just gone out later by myself, but it seemed stupid... until I saw the workout. 3x200 800 3x200 800 3x200, 100 recovery between 200's and 400 between sets. Because this workout was so minimal I decided to run it pretty hard. I didn't get my 200 splits because I forgot my watch, but I got my times for each 3x200 including the recovery (totaling 800).
3x200 2:45
800 2:33
3x200 2:41
800 2:29 (not bad considering I was pretty tired and it was fairly hot, didnt feel too too hard, even with the previous running I am confident that I could have strung two of these together if it had been a race, I would say I am in 4:43-46 shape for a cold windless mile)
3x200 2:36 (as the workout went on I kept my speed on the 200's but just increased my speed on the recovery)
so that including 3 miles up, 2 miles down, and the recoveries made decent but still insufficient mileage. I am gonna have to run pretty long tomorrow in the evening and friday in the morning because friday evening I am going home and don't like to do more than 10/day at home (my parents think I run too much).
18.2 miles at a decent pace (7:45) for me at this point on this course which is very hilly. One crazy thing happened. At mile 12 it was dark and a bird obviously mistook my head for some small animal and tried to catch it. I heard some wings and then felt talons on my head. My natural response was just to sprint for a bit so when I turned around I couldn't see the bird. But it freaked me out a bit.
AM: 6 only 10 hours after the long run. I stretched well after the long run but the pavement took its toll. My hips were a bit sore this morning. I don't think my body is used to running on roads anymore. Oh well, with my time constraints this week I just need to get the miles in as fast as possible so unless every run is a tempo run I need to do some pavement.
PM: 3 wanted 6 but between work and family obligations I needed to pull a quickie. So I'll have to do 13.something tomorrow. Sunday there is a race in my hometown. Last year the winner went 18:06 which I think I could beat even with no taper. I will go and see how fast they go out in the first mile. If anyone is under 5:40 I will just tempo the rest of it. Between the heat and no taper I don't think it is worth it. On a cold flat course well tapered I think I could go 17 flat now, but I have had several hard days recently trying to catch up the mileage from not running on sunday.
Did the outback steakhouse 5k. Time was 18:57. I didn't race the whole thing, but it was a very hard tempo run. How pathetic is that time? I went out with the leaders for a while but then dropped back a bit. They went through the first mile in 5:20 and I went through in 5:40 and I knew in that heat and humidity I didn't have a chance. So I settled into what I thought was a 6 minute pace. The course was a little strange though and although they had the half miles marked, I went through the second half mile (of the second mile) 20 seconds slower than the first half mile of the second mile, which I also though was slow. So the second 'mile' was like 6:25. I am pretty sure it was long. Then the third mile I felt like I slowed down because I was alone in 5th but went faster than the second mile. Anyway, it was a solid workout. But I don't want to think about the time. If the course was accurate, could the heat and humidity hurt that much? It was only 76 degrees actually. But it was 100% humidity with a very slight rain. Got the mileage in because of a 2.1 mile warmup and 3 separate cooldowns, lol. First one was 2 miles, then ran the course twice with different people while waiting for awards.
EDIT: Yeah, I just checked other race times and everybody did about 30 seconds slower at this race than on other harder courses when it was hotter. And those races are recent. So it must have been around 150m long.
Easy run on the horse trails at Percy Warner park. Didn't feel like running and put it off till late. But once I got into the forest, I felt great. I really notice the difference between long runs on pavement and trails after that 18 miler last week. My hips hurt for days after that run and I couldn't comfortably use the full range of motion for my right hip. It feels better now and I vow to get at least 50% of my miles on dirt even if it means fewer miles due to time constraints.
Did a workout on the local cross country course. There is a 4k and 5k course and because there is a 4k race on this course next week we did that one. We did one loop to warm up (and a little more because we took a wrong turn) and then planned to do 2 min hard, 2 min easy x8 but I was with Ted and he was doing 2:10-15 and I was always 15 seconds behind him so I finished strong to wherever he was. And he started on the 2min mark. So it ended up 2:25-2:30 hard x8 with 1:25-1:30 recoveries. We did 2 loops of the course during the workout. There was a doe and her two baby deer eating grass at one corner of the course. They weren't scared of us at all and stayed throughout the run. Afterwards we cooled down with another loop of the 4k. It was dark by then but just light enough to see 4 big deer running across the course at an incredible speed. It was a good workout especially because it got me away from worrying so much about the times that would have been bad on the track in this heat.
8.5 miles. I felt like a douchebag because I left my sister's birthday party to go for a run. And when I got back I couldn't drink liquor for a while because I was trying to rehydrate. I think this elevates my running to disorder level. When something gets to the point at which it interferes with your social and family life it is a disorder.
Wanted to try the daniel's type marathon workout on a smaller scale and in a fair setting. At this time of year in nashville, the only way to do that is to go indoors. Treadmills aren't fair in my opinion because unless you have a massive fan the windflow isn't the same. Goal paces were 6:45 for marathon pace and 6:00 for threshold.
2 miles warmup
2 miles marathon pace 6:40
1 mile threshold 5:59
2 miles marathon pace 6:42
1 mile threshold 5:58
2 miles marathon pace 6:39
1 mile threshold 5:53 (wanted it over at this point)
2 miles marathon pace 6:42 (wasn't a struggle to hit the time, I just wanted to stop)
1 mile cooldown
The first two sets of 2 miles MP 1 mile LT felt great. I was amazed at how well I recovered from the lactate threshold at marathon pace. After that it was a chore. It was mostly mentally difficult. Remember, I was on a 9.2 lap/mile track. So I did 119.6 laps and another 4 laps on the outdoor track. On a fairly flat road, I would add 5 seconds per mile. This type of workout is somewhat feasible, especially if there was any rest or recovery between marathon pace and threshold pace. But I don't think daniel's 18-20 mile workouts of mostly marathon pace mixed with threshold pace are doable unless you have better fitness than the paces you are using.
