Bret

AM - 5.0 miles easy before church this morning.  Cool day to start, in low 50's.  Felt fine.

AM - early start this morning - 10 miles easy.  Not a bad run, but feeling like I may be getting something.  Headache and a bit acidic / heartburny feeling this morning - very unusual for me.  Busy work week ahead, so will be getting my runs in before work in the mornings.

PM - after a long frantic day of work I hit the gym/treadmill for a speed workout.  I did an old workout that I had not done in years.  Pretty basic - 2 mile warm up then it is an "50/20" run.  I run 50 seconds "on" and then 20 seconds "off".  With the "on" segments I run at 11.5 mph and then drop it down to 7 mph for the "off" segments at a 1% grade.  I do these for 15 mins then a 2 mile cool down. The first few are manageable, but the last few really become challenging.  Was really pleased with the workout, but then disappointed that the gym shut down the front desk where I wanted to buy a protein shake and gatorade for the drive home. 

AM - easy 3.0 mile recovery run in the cold and rain.  Needed a shake out run from the workout last night.  Hoping to get a second run later in the day.

Lunchtime run - 6.0 miles on the treadmill at 7:08 pace.  I would call that a steady state run rather than "easy."  A work colleague hopped on the treadmill next to me and we chatted the whole time.  Enjoyable run. 

My gym has begun offering VO2 Max testing for a fee.  I was their first customer today. 

I have not ever had VO2 Max testing done before - but was curious about what my score would be and interested to see what type of "prescription" they provide to me for training to improve performance. 

It was fairly straight forward - They had me in a private room with a Woodway treadmill (nice) - had me do a warm up and then attached a mask to my face which had some tubes connected to a device connected to a computer - and they had a blood pressure cuff on one arm and a heartrate monitor strap.  I started at 7 mph and every 2 mins they increased the incline or grade by 2% until I could go no further.  The tech checked my bp every two minutes and asked me to point on a sheet on a scale of 6-20 (20 being worst) how I was feeling.  When I got to 13 mins I was over 180 on my heartrate and knew I had only a limited amount of time left.  I thought the test was for 16 mins so I felt like I sucked when I had to call it quits just after 14 mins.

I then cooled down and they continued to monitor my HR and BP and then they went over the data.  Much to my surprise my VO2 Max was 72. 

I have an appointment next week with the guy who will run the data into a report with a prescription for improving the VO2 max and my performance. 

Lunchtime run 5.0 miles - cool but comfortable day in the upper 50's and breezey.  I ran really easy - but probably faster per mile than I wanted with a race tomorrow morning.  But it felt good. 

Had a good race this morning. Race was around a mall parking lot - several hills and many turns. It was two laps which was problematic on the second lap because of an abundance of walkers. Similar to the video game Frogger I was forced to weave in and around folks. Richie had a great race - with a 17:51 finish time and 9th overall. I ran through the first mile with him at 5:49 but he was feeling very strong and I told him to go. Another friend Brian Darrow who has his own blog www.arunnersblog.com was with us as well. He ran a PR of 18:55 today. Another friend - Justin came to the race too. We had a great time and had breakfast together afterwards. I was pleased with the race - I ran 6:01 and 6:05 for miles 2 and 3 - so I was consistent. It was the best time I have run for a 5k in at least 5 years.

* Officially I was first in my age group - but Richie actually won the age.  However they recorded his age as 71 instead of 41 on his registration - so they awarded him the Grand Masters trophy - astounded at the speed of his race at 71 years of age.  :)