Ran at the Fairview professional training facility today. OK, not really. Really its Fairview High School. But I didn't see one high schooler out there at the track this morning and I saw a whole lot of professional athletes, so maybe its mis-named.
Fortunately the bulk of them arrived after I finished my workout so I didn't have to feel completely pathetic.
Chrissie Wellington was the only pro athlete running while I was going between 7:30-9, I only recognized her from lucho posting a picture of her gnarly calves that were unmistakable from behind as I was trying to keep up with her a couple times around the track. Chatted with her briefly asking her about her upcoming ironman in AZ in a couple weeks...she seems really cool and nice.
Then a bunch of others started rolling in at 9...Brent Vaughn, James Carney, Tyler McCandless, Matt Reed, and others...I can't remember who the middle green coat dude is. Our awesome ART therapist Richey Hansen is there on the right with the glasses talking to coach Jay Johnson.
I chatted with Brent briefly about our wives running together in the upcoming cross country club champs in December...they have put together a team that should have no problem at all winning by a large margin with Sara Vaughn, Nan, Renee Metivier-Baile, Colleen DeReuck, and Sara Slattery.
As they were rolling in, the weather was starting to turn. They missed out on 2 gorgeous sunny hours of running from 7-9 as seen here before my workout:
By about 10:30 it started raining and snowing...winter is here finally it would appear. Glad I got a run in early today.
Oh yeah...and here's what I did at the track this morning, which was really fun and felt great.
- Warm up for 21 min/stretch, then 4x25 second strides
- 4 X 45 seconds at 5:15-5:30 pace with 75 seconds easy in between
- 5 Minutes steady (1400 Meters) at 5:41 avg pace - HR: 158 avg - 173 Max - slow for 2 min recovery
- 7 X 400 Meters at the following times - 79.9, 79.1, 80.4, 80.21, 79.6, 81.3, 80.0 (all between 5:10-5:20 pace) - 60 seconds slow jog between each lap, then 2 minute recovery after the 7th
- 5:22 Minutes steady (1400 Meters) at 6:04 avg. HR: 159 avg - 173 max
- 3.75 Miles cool down running up the skunk canyon trail a little ways and back to my new house.
Total: 13.1 Miles - 1:39 - (7:38 avg) - HR: 150 avg
I kept it fun by keeping my HR below 175. Above that and it becomes painful. My heart rate maxed out at 174 on a couple of the 400's. I'm interested by this fact, because I know I can push my heart a lot harder than that. But I have not felt the desire or motivation to push it harder than that for a while now. I think I'm saving the harder than that effort for my next race. But I'm curious, from a training standpoint, whether or not if I did more training at my truly max heart rate level it would improve my race performance. I've heard various things on the topic. Perhaps it could be detrimental to over do it by over exerting the effort too much. I'm not totally sure. I am just training by my intuition mostly and trying to do what feels healthy. I have noticed when I push it too hard I tend toward pulling muscles or other stuff, so I feel good about the effort today.
I find it easier to get it up closer to the 180's if I'm running up a hill. Last time I remember getting it into the mid 180's is the last half mile of the skirt chaser 5K over a year ago.
