I only run on days that end in a "y."

First I was going to run 6 miles, and then 7, and at 6.5 I decided to run some 100m striders so I finished with 8 miles.  Ran them all on the soft pathway around the small lake near the office. I estimated 100m and did not do a very good job - more like 400 feet.  6 x 100m @ 6:20 - 5:50 pace. Easy miles 8:10-8:20 pace.

Nice crisp morning - low 30's. Met up with 4 others to run this traditional pre-marathon workout.  I think it is one of my favorite workouts.  We ran the 11 mile Town Lake trail loop.  Part of the trail was closed and the detour added another half mile.  Anyway, the workout consisted of 3 mile warm up followed by 20 minutes @ MGP, 2 minutes easy, followed by 10 minutes @ HMP, 2 minutes easy followed by 5 minutes @ 10k pace, 1 minute easy, followed by 5 minutes @ 10k pace, one minute easy, followed by 5 x 1 minute @ 5k pace with 1 minute easy between each, with half mile cool down at the end.  

MGP pace: 20 minutes @ 7:20 pace

HMP pace: 10 minutes @ 6:45 pace

10k pace: 5 minutes @ 6:35 pace, 5 minutes @ 6:29 pace.

5k pace: 1 minutes @  6:17, 6:04, 6:05, 5:59, 5:50.

Decided to do some cross training today - 45 minutes on the stationary bike. 

Cold - 20 degrees and windy.  Met the group and ran to the track for some 800 repeats to get in some good turnover - did not go all out but it was a good effort.  Ran 200m active recovery in between each - 2.5 cool down.  Sprinted the last 100m of the last one - could not overtake my running partner but hung with him - but hey, he's only 22 and a bit of a lead that I had to make up. :-)

800 splits: 3:17, 3:12, 3:07, 3:05, 3:03, 2:58, 2:59, 2:45.

I came upon this Dr.'s website by chance.  He as a lot of very interesting articles as it relates to running and training. Everything he speaks of has been researched and studied.

 Here is one little blurb about how intervals increase both speed and endurance: 

http://drmirkin.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2010-11-11T18%3A18%3A00-05%3A00&max-results=7

"Going out and exercising slowly over long distances will not give you much endurance unless you also exercise intensely once or twice a week at much shorter distances. A person can run a marathon or ride a bicycle century much faster by training fast two or more times a week. The most common mistake made by endurance athletes is to exercise so much that they can't maintain their speed training on their hard interval days. This is often seen in runners or cyclists who perform so many miles per week that their fast workouts end up much slower than they should be."

Beautiful morning.  There was a pre-run meeting about Austin marathon strategies.  The weather as of now does not look that promising but we will see how the week progresses.

Just a short run on the Town Lake trail.  Not much to be gained at this point.  Picked it up at the end for a strong finish - ran the last quarter at around 5:25 pace.

 8:59, 8:24, 7:51, 7:57, 7:37, 7:32, 7:19, 7:11, 7:13, 6:50, .6 @ 5:58.