Remainder of This Week

This was a good week of training. On Tuesday I did 8.94 miles after work with Assynt Macleod at a comfortable 7:35 pace. Then Wednesday I did another round of speedwork, but this time with Brian King only, who is at the top of his game these days and who reset his 5K PR earlier this summer at 17:51. We also changed things up a bit and went back to the .7 mile loop around the lake here in New Territory. We did five repeats, with times of 4:02, 3:58, 4:02, 4:02 and 4:02. That was the best five rep set I've done on that course and it's August. On Thursday I got in a 3.50 mile run before work then 7.87 miles that night. Then last night I met Brian King over in Greatwood for a slow 16.2 mile long-run. Today, to close the week, I headed out for a five mile easy run but the body was too sore and the legs dead so I headed back with a 60 mile week complete.

Monday Speedwork - 08/24/09

With some races on the calendar and my schedule weekend after this one I want to fine tune my speed and overall fitness these next two weeks. With that in mind I plan two speedwork sessions this week as well as 60+ miles.

Tonight I went over to the .4 mile oval for some interval work. It's been awhile since I've done these (a couple of months) and since they were the first speedwork I ever did I have a long history with this oval, which makes it an ideal gauge for my fitness. My best lap on the oval is a 2:04 a couple of years ago, and when I did this workout regularly I got to where I could get most if not all six of the laps down to 2:10 or better. But given that I haven't done these in some time I wasn't expecting anything like that. But I did do better than I expected.

When I got to the oval there was a sprinkler on in someone's yard that would have drenched me each time I went around so instead of doing a 4 mile cool-down I decided to do a 4 mile warmup. By the time I got back I was warmed up plenty and the sprinkler was off. Time to rev the engine. Here are the six fast .4s that I did, with a .2 jogging interval in between:

2:13
2:09
2:13
2:12
2:12
2:05

I left it all out there on that last one. Everything felt great tonight and I was pleased that I was able to find the energy at 8:30 PM to get these done. Easy miles tomorrow followed by more speedwork on Wednesday or Thursday.

18 Miler This Morning

I met Assynt Macleod and Brian King at the end of my driveway this morning at 5:30 AM for what was to be an 18 mile long-run.

We never discussed pace but all settled into a groove that felt relatively brisk for a long-run but not something I thought would be difficult to maintain. At 5.43 miles we passed up our first opportunity for water or a bathroom break since no one needed either. At seven miles we passed up our 2nd chance at water because again, no one needed any. This is an out-and-back course and there's no water between mile seven and the turnaround at mile nine, which meant we wouldn't have another shot at hydration until we got back to the seven mile mark, which would be 11 miles into the run. That stop is an elementary school with two cold water fountains. I had also gone last night and planted nearly frozen Gatorade by the school.

So when we got to the school, eleven miles into the run, we were thirsty. Assynt and I took a GU and we all drank our fill. The break lasted three minutes exactly and we were off to finish the final seven miles. With 5.43 miles to go we passed the park with water fountains and bathrooms but none of us felt like we needed it so we crossed over into the point of no return (or point of no more water until the finish, unless you count my son's elementary school one mile from the finish and you'd have to be desperate to stop there with only a mile to go).

Up until the three minute water stop we were holding a 7:29 pace and I was hoping that in the final seven miles we might chip away at that three minute penalty we had on the clock, since I don't shut the watch off for breaks. With Brian leading the charge we made a pretty good stab at it. A final mile of 6:50 helped considerably but just about emptied my tank. The total time was 2:15:44, a 7:32 overall pace. Here are the mile splits:

8:00
7:37
7:23
7:27
7:18
7:18
7:30
7:24
7:27
7:29
10:31
7:30
7:23
7:14
7:05
7:12
7:07
6:50

These are my kind of long-runs - all business, not a lot of unnecessary stopping, a decent pace, and negative splits. If we can do this in mid-August I can only imagine what we'll do on those November 22 milers.