The Renegade

Man, I geuss you could say I felt tired today. It wasn't that bad, but I was kinda struggling in the middle section of my run. I ran to the Aggie Bull across the street from Romney Stadium, then went to Old Maine and came back on Canyon Rd. and Center. I definetley felt better once the run hit it's elevation peak and and I started going downhill (at Old Maine). Average pace was 7:50. That's about as slow as I'll most likely go on an easy run for now on, unless it's the day after a super tough workout or meet, or if I'm cooling down after any workout. It was actually pretty nice weather, and I was sweating by the end. This week will definetley have more more volume than last week. It's kind of funny how my lower mileage weeks just happening to be when I'm not racing but I run alot more miles in the week of a race. That's fine though, it is preseason, but I'll have to make sure to get solid training in every week.Tomorrow the new semester starts and I've got a class that I can run in (or do strength training and lifting), so that will help.

Surprisingly solid day today. I ran two miles in seventh hour, and they were 110% grueling. It was 8:30 pace at the fastest and my legs felt so tight. Then I waited around for everyone else to show up (we had a surprising increase in numbers) and then we did our mile warmup. The workout was 8x400m w/ 2 min rests. The prescription was mile date pace, but I ended up pushing myself a bit harder than that. Here are my times:

1:17,  1:22.6,   1:19,  1:15.4,  1:15.6,  1:20.6,  1:19.1,  1:14.8              

Avg: 1:18 

2.5 mile cooldown after, followed by weights.

Good day today. I got a lot more miles than I planned on running but ath's okay because I feel fine. In 7'th hour I ran a half a mile on the infield and did some warmup stretches. Then when practice started we did another 800 and stretches. We ran up the Canal trail and by the time we got off that everybody had turned back except for Mark and I. So we went up teh trail to Cliff Side and made our way down to Providence did a big loop there and ran back to the school. Before I knew it we had gone 8.5 just on that run. Then we did a quarters worth of strides, then hurdle mobility drills and hip drills. Finally I ran an extra 400m just to finish off the 10 for the day. Great day of training as always. :) It wasn't as cold as I expected either. 

Wow, I think I am on a streak this week as far as training quality goes. The only thing I missed out on today was lifting, which kind of bummed me out, but oh well. 1 mile in 7th hour today with the same hurdle mobility drills as yesterday stuck in between, plus about 4 minutes of core. Then when practice started we jogged 800 on the track, loosened up a bit, and then ran to the usual spot by my house to do the tempo run.We did quite a bit of warmup drills and then started not long after that. I felt pretty good during it, almost as good as I felt on the last one. The difference was that it was a lot faster. I'm beginning to really like these runs. We had more people, too, maybe five or six, so it made it a bit easier. No one running next to me though. Here are my splits:

3:09,  3:09,  3:05,  3:14   

Total: 12:38      

Avg. 800m: 3:09      

Avg. 400m: 1:34

That was very amazing and surprising. I thought I was going to run my slowest time yet and coach even told me to expect it to be slow today because of the hard week this week. But that was faster than any other time in that workout. After that we ran back and did a set of strides which added another mile, and then after a small amount of hip excercises I had to go. All I can say is that if training goes on like it is this week, I think I'm going to have a breakthrough track season. Very big confidence booster. I'm going to go low 40s this week and then try and maintain that for a while before I step it up again.

Easy run with strides today. Ran the Icon trail with Mark and partly with Coach. I didn't feel as good as I did yesterday, but it's been a hard week. After the run I did 4x200m alternating mile pace and 800 pace.  I'm having some pain in my right shin and left hip, so if I still feel it tomorrow after the meet, I'll take it super easy on Monday. Tomorrow at the meet It's just Mark, maybe Zair and me going, so we'll see how that goes.

Great way to end the week today. I am very pleased\ about it. We got to the meet a long time before my race, so there was a lot of sitting around other than watching Mark's race, which he did well in. After that I warmed up about a mile and a half while he cooled down. Then when I got back I spent a nasty amount of time doing various warmup walks and strecthes and walking around, just staying loose. Finally my race started ( I was in heat three.) I was seeded based on 2:27 last time, and from how my warmup felt I didn't really know if I could do much better than that. But the gun went off and I felt pretty good and loose from the start, with the help of quite the adrenaline boost I might say right before we toed the line. My first lap was a 34 ( mind you I wasn't wearing a watch so I didn't really know.) That didn't feel bad at all, and I was surprised because yesterday I ran some pretty sluggish 200s after the run. I had okay position. The next two laps, because Coach forgot to get the second split, were an even 1:10, which was still right where I needed to be. (I imagine the third one was slower than the second). This was where I passed quite a few people. I started doing it after the first lap, and then I passed maybe three guys at once on the inside of straightaway, sorting of using my elbows, so it was kind of risky and I didn't have a lot of space, but I didn't get DQd.  On the bell lap I passed one or two more people, which put me in third with the leaders maybe 25m out of my reach. I really tried to go crazy and I ran a 32 for that one. After I finished I was still really hyped up, expecially after I found out it was an all-time PR, not a big one and not very impressive yet, but I that will definetley change throughout the track season. When I was passing people, it's funny because I would come up behind them and then next to them I would think "For sure their going to respond and not let me pass them"  but then none of them did respond. I think that's from the miles and the lifting. The speed has been helping me with running faster times. After the race I cooled down with Mark on a trail that led to Ogden's XC course, and we ran the rode loop and the park from the actually course then headed back up. It brought back some memories from my rookie XC days. That was a little over four miles, and it was pretty grueling by the end. That topped off my week. I'd say it's been a dang good training week, and I hope the best for the next few and maintaining my mileage.