V02 max - 9 miles w/ 6 x 600 m @ 5K race pace (7:11 target pace), jog 50 to 90% interval time between. 7:21 am, 46°F, 60% humidity, wind 3 S. My kids don't have school today or tomorrow for reasons that are unfathomable to me, though I suspect it's a comp day and then a professional development day for the teachers. I have absolutely no discipline regarding getting to bed on time and getting up on time when I don't have to get my kids off to school. So I stayed up way too late last night and then slept in this morning. I really didn't feel like running when I got up, but I was okay once I got out the door. It was really a beautiful morning and it turned in to a pretty good run. I ran a little over 4 miles and then was going to go to the high school track. I have always used the middle school track in the past because it is easier to get to. But my son says that the high school track is a real track surface, while the middle school track is asphalt. So I was heading to the high school track, but I could see that there was a team of some sort, I think it might have been lacrosse, practicing on the infield. I didn't want to run my workout with a bunch of high school boys watching, so I continued on to the middle school track. That's no problem because the high school and the middle school are right next to each other. Maybe I'll try to go to the high school track next time I have a track workout if I'm out earlier in the morning. I kept my rest intervals on the V02 max repeats pretty short. The 600 meters took me about 2 minutes and 45 seconds, or a little less on the later ones, and my rest intervals were about 1 minute and 20 seconds, so close to the 50% time, rather than 90%. Here are my stats: Splits before the intervals: 9:53, 9:44, 9:32, 9:25, 0.82 @ 9:33.
Pace on the 600 m intervals: 7:14, 7:14, 7:07, 7:00, 6:59
Splits after the intervals: 9:45, 9:19, 0.16 @ 9:13 I was arithmetically challenged when I finished the intervals. I looked at my total distance and saw 7.38, or something like that, and did a rough subtraction in my head to see how much further I needed to run to get 9 miles total. Somehow, I came up with a little over 2 and a half miles instead of a little over 1 and a half miles. So I was going along and after a little more than a mile and a half I was thinking about what route to take in order to end up at home in a mile and I looked down at my watch and the total time said just over 9 miles. So then I realized my mistake. At that point, the shortest route home was a half a mile, so I ended up running 9.5 miles total instead of 9. Today I bring you the penultimate proprioceptive cue from Brain Training for Runners by Matt Fitzgerald. It is "Axle Between the Knees:" "Imagine there is an axle, dowel, post, or something else of the sort that is positioned between your knees and pushes your knees half an inch farther apart than they would normally be while you run. This proprioceptive cue helps you engage the hip flexors and hip external rotators and prevent interval rotation of the thigh—a common cause of injuries." I thought about this cue some while I was running before I got to the track, I didn't really think about it much while I was at the track, but then I thought about it a lot while I was running home from the track because it gave some relief to the chafing of my thunderous thighs that had developed during the track running. I think I need some longer/better shorts.
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