Monday Speedwork

I headed over to my new speedwork route here in New Territory this evening. This is the .7 mile path around the lake that I described in the previous post.

Tonight I wanted to get in five repeats so I took it relatively easy on the first one, easing into it. The first one came in at 4:23, a 6:21 pace. Like I said, easing into it. The 2nd one was better at 4:10, a 6:01 pace. On the 3rd one I didn't hit the lap timer right so I didn't get a split, but I'd guess it was around 4:05 or 4:06. The 4th one was 4:04 for a 5:54 pace. I wanted to go sub 4 minutes but didn't think I had any more than that 4:04 but you never know. Time to find out on the final one. I clocked a 3:55, good for a 5:38 pace. I know I don't have much more than THAT in me, at least for now. I'm going to try to do this routine twice this week and twice next week, then maybe once the following week.

Week In Review

Sorry I haven't blogged lately. I've been too busy to do it and you've probably been too busy to read it so we're okay. Since that hard 20 miler with Brian a week ago Saturday I've been very sluggish. I've heard of recovery days but not recovery weeks, but I guess that's what I had. Only got in 27 miles, although they were almost all quality miles, which is good I guess, if you're going to have a recovery week.

The day after the 20 miler (a week ago yesteday) I did an easy 5 mile recovery run during the day. Then Monday night I could only manage to get out for a 3.5 mile run, but I hammered it. Didn't wear the Garmin or the stopwatch so not sure how fast I went but it was red-line material all the way. Felt great. Then Tuesday I was very tired and just didn't feel like running. On Christmas eve I did 5.37 miles in my mom's neighborhood in Spring and again, hammered it good. Miles three, four and five were all 6:25s and my overall pace for the 5.37 was 6:32. But again on Thursday (Christmas Day) I was feeling run down again all day and just couldn't make myself go out for any milage. But on Friday I made my way out for some speedwork here in New Territory. There's a walking/jogging path that goes three quarters of the way around a lake in the center of New Territory. From end to end it's about .7 miles. I've done speedwork on this path once before but discovered something pretty cool about it the other day. At the end of the path, if I just keep going through the neighborhood on the sidewalk I can get back to the beginning and make a complete loop. The distance to get back to the beginning is about .35 so I can take a nice little walking/jogging recovery and do another one, same direction. No more getting to the end, walking around in a circle, then starting back the other way. So that's what I did on Friday - four fast .7s, with the final one working out to a 5:48 pace, though of course it wasn't a full mile.

I wrapped up the week with a quality 8 mile run on Saturday at an overall pace of 6:56. But no real distance in the week. This next week I need to put in a good 10 or 12 mile tempo run and of course more speedwork. That's the element that's been missing from my training and there's precious little time left before the half marathon I'm running here at the Houston Marathon. I don't expect to equal my 1:23:29 from October '07 but would like to be sub 1:25 if possible.

20 Miler With Brian and Steve S.

The day after the 30K, my wife left for Boston, not returning until late Wednesday night. That worked out well because I couldn't run while she was out of town due to Daddy duty, but needed the recovery time anyway. I got in 11 miles with Steve Schroeder on Thursday evening at about a 7:45 pace then was too busy to run Friday. My wife had some things to do Saturday AM and told me that if I was going to run I needed to be done by 8 AM. Brian King, Steve S. and I had already talked about a 20 miler that morning but having to be home by 8 AM was going to mean an early start. I calculated that if we started from my house at 5:15 and ran a 7:45 pace (including stops), we'd be done by 7:50 AM. So the guys met me at 5:15 and we set out on the great out-and-back course we have here in Sugar Land. We start at my house, run about two miles to get out of New Territory, then another two miles to get through Telfair, then it's under 59 and over to University for about a 1.3 mile run on a huge sidewalk until we get to the park over there. The park has water fountains and a bathroom, and is 5.43 miles from my house. Then it's a left onto Commonwealth and into First Colony, going right by the fire station at the finish of the Fired Up 5K. We can follow Commonwealth for some distance and until Saturday morning had not gotten to the end of it, even though we'd come close when we'd done 18 miles before.

Steve was having issues with some soreness on his foot and there were also some bathroom needs that snuck up on us near the park so we made a pit stop there. There's an elementary school at about 7 miles out that has water fountains. We declined to stop, having gotten a drink at the park. At about 8.5 miles out Steve, dealing with increasing pain in his foot, turned back. Brian and I continued on and actually got to the end of Commonwealth - a dead end into a T. We turned right, then turned to go back when we were 10 miles from the house. Knowing that we were on the way back in, and knowing that cold Gatorade that I had put out in an ice chest the night before was awaiting us at the school, caused us to pick up the pace a bit. We hit the Gatorade, which was really too cold to chug, then put on our game faces for the final 7 miles. As we finished our break and got back on the course, we'd averaged a 7:45 pace for 13 miles, with stops included. I figured we could probably chip away at that. We almost always run negative splits in our training runs and Brian is running well lately so I knew we'd cruise in for the final 7. Over the course of the final 7 miles we never exceeded a 7:16 pace.

In those final miles I had a long discussion with Brian about not giving in to adversity late in a race without realizing that we were on the brink of giving Brian an opportunity to try it. At about 18.25 miles I was coming close to real fatigue and could sense Brian wanting to pull back on the pace. I talked to him about being in the latter stages of a marathon and hitting the wall, getting a cramp, developing a major blister, being totally exhausted, etc. I told him that it's at that point that you have to ask yourself which can are you going to open, the can of quit or the can of whoop ass. Knowing that he was running out of gas I felt like it was a real chance for me to "talk him in", even though I was on fumes too. Mile 19 was a 7:10 and I kept Brian on my shoulder through the final mile as we clocked a 7:12. We were both whipped but it was a good strong finish. We'd averaged a 7:10 pace over the final 7 miles, and brought our overall pace down to 7:33 for the full 20.

It's my hope that Brian had a mini breakthrough. He'll need to draw on this experience if he wants to BQ, which I fully expect him to do in Jan.

Lakes Of Williams Ranch 30K - Sugar Land

I got up this morning to go run the 30K, which starts about 10 minutes from my house. In fact, our long-run route comes within about 100 yards of the edge of the course.

I wasn't really psyched up to do this race this morning for various reasons. The weather was going to be far from ideal, with temps around 70 at the start, and high humidity. Also my training has been off track for the past couple of weeks. Week before this last one I had to go to San Antonio for a trade show and didn't run at all for three (really four) straight days. I didn't do anything special once I got back unless you count the 8 mile tempo run I did Tuesday when the front blew in. I attempted some speedwork Thursday night but was tired and didn't finish. I knew it was going to be warm so I wanted to train in warm, humid conditions but that wicked cold-front and snow eliminated the chance of that.

But of course I headed over anyway and got my game face on once we started. Three years ago - the only other time I've done this race - I had one of the best races of my life, ran a negative split, picked up hardware, and ran a 6:36 pace. If conditions had been ideal I guess I might have been able to target 6:35-6:40 pace, but they weren't. I hooked up with a runner we met down in Schulenberg a year and a half ago named Sean Dunbar, from Katy. Sean is a solid runner who has posted some excellent times since I started noticing his name. He told me at the start that he was targeting a 6:50 pace but we took off together and hit the first mile in 6:40. The 1st through 12 miles were:

1 - 6:40
2 - 6:40
3 - 6:35
4 - 6:42
5 - 6:43
6 - 6:39
7 - 6:39
8 - 6:41
9 - 6:35
10 - 6:37 (1:06:30 for 10 miles)
11 - 6:36
12 - 6:39

These were the good miles, when I was hammering along with Sean. But I started to realize in mile 11 that I wasn't going to be able to keep dropping the 6:40 pace we had going. Just after mile 12 we hit a water station and I took a bit more time than he did - good time to let him go. I didn't drop off too terribly bad running the next 6.6 alone, especially given the adverse conditions, but drop off I did. Here are the remainder of the splits:

13 - 6:48
14 - 6:47
15 - 7:01
16 - 6:55
17 - 7:00
18 - 7:05
Final .69 - 4:45 (6:54 pace)

I'm sure the course was accurate but those of you with a Garmin know that early on in most races you start beeping miles well before the marker. The splits I've provided were not according to the markers on the course but according to the Garmin. So the final .6 wasn't actually .69 on the course, just according to my Garmin. Here are the numbers:

Total time: 2:06:01, 6:45 pace by the Garmin, 6:47 officially
Splits: 1st half - 1:02:21, 2nd half - 1:03:39
27th overall, 2nd in the 45-49 male age group - I'm just lucky Sim Cuevas, Kevin Regis, or Tuan Nguyen weren't there today.

Reflecting on my performance, it's about what I should have expected and I'm okay with it. I think with cooler weather I probably could have maintained the 6:40 pace. But I still feel like I have about one more step to take to be completely back at my A game level.

Great running with you Sean, if you're a reader.

More Mile Repeats

Tonight I went and did mile repeats again. As I mentioned last time, these aren't quite a mile. They're actually .92, with about a .45 mile jog recovery. The numbers weren't bad tonight, better overall than when I did these a few weeks ago, though the first one was cautiously slow. Here are the splits:

.91 miles, 5:39 (6:14 pace)
.92 miles, 5:32 (6:02 pace)
.92 miles, 5:26 (5:53 pace)
.92 miles, 5:22 (5:48 pace)