Course: hilly miles 1-14 then 4.74 miles flat along the coast
Splits were 6:45 (mostly slight uphill), 6:12 (downhill was steep), 6:34 rolling, 6:24 rolling, 6:29 rolling, 6:33 rolling,6:51 hill, 6:28 rolling, 6:27 rolling, 6:35 rolling, 6:51 hill, 6:42 rolling (started to feel my legs here), 6:39 (rolling), 6:51 (bit of a hill),6:41 flat, 6:46 flat, 6:49 flat, 6:58 flat but with headwind, 4:31(6:04 pace) kicked it in a bit
Miles 1-5 were pretty uneventful. Felt like 6:30 pace was a jog. Mile 3 I picked up the effort a little to catch and run with a group for a while. This ended when my shoe came untied at mile 5. Then I latched on to this guy who passed me while I retied my shoe. We stayed together till mile 13. A group caught us and passed us but we kept a fairly even effort in the rolling hills. The group that passed us around mile 9 included the winning female. That bugged me, but she was really good. I consoled myself with the fact that I could beat her at the mile and 5k most likely. I dropped the guy I was running with in the final hill of the course and he never made up the gap. At this point my legs were feeling pretty stiff. They weren't that tired, but the pounding (especially the downhills) took its toll. I was already pretty happy with my performance so I just rolled in without undue strain until the last half mile or so in which I decided to kick it into another gear. I probably could have done 6:15 pace for the last 3-4 miles because aerobically I wasn't working and I had glycogen because I had been eating honey. Its just that the motivation wasn't there. Oh well, this wasn't a goal race for me, just good training. And the course was a bit long, like 200m. Afterwards I took a dip in the ocean to ice my legs for 15 min. It wasn't super cold, but its what I had.
So what does this mean for my marathon. Well, I still have time to train, and what I learned from this is that the cumulative pounding on asphault makes a given pace more difficult later in the race. So I am going to make sure I get several 20+ milers on the road before the marathon to get used to the pounding. I also plugged my time into mcmillan's running calculator and it said I could expect a 2:57:32, so although not much room for error, at least I am not already behind the ball and this course was pretty hilly which my marathon is not. I also need to get in the proper vo2max and threshold work such that I actually peak for the marathon as opposed to just running it off base training. I am not afraid of the glycogen wall anymore, now I am afraid of the asphault wall (or hill perhaps, as it doesn't destroy you all at once like the glyco wall, but gradually makes you stiff such that a given pace is more difficult to maintain). We will see what I can put together for the half marathon in two weeks. I think I can manage about 6:20 pace which would put me just under 1:23. I think my goal will be breaking 1:23.
Did the haynes classic training run with dan (2:01 800m runner) and will. Dan wanted to push but luckily I had my garmin and told him I wasn't going under 8 and really wanted to keep it above 8:15 because of my race yesterday. I am only really sore around my groin muscles (hip adductors). So that is good, but I would rather not be sore at all. This is the kind of sore that might keep going for several days. I just hope it doesn't hurt my workouts on wednesday and friday.
Haynes classic training route. I am really glad that I didn't have a workout scheduled for today. I really needed the recovery. I started out slow and when it felt uncomfortable I slowed down. I didn't have my gps with me but I bet I was going like 9 to 9:30. I wasn't sore I just felt sluggish. Tomorrow I have a vo2max workout. I am not sore so my legs should be fine. But I don't know if I will be fully recovered aerobically to hit the times I want. We will see. Its not a workout you can really force.
3x5x400 with 100m recovery between 400's and 400m recovery between sets. Times were something like 75, 80, 79, 80, 80, 79, 78, 80, 80, 75, 76, 78, 80, 81, 81. Nobody wanted to do a 4th set and I had hit several of them too fast so I decided to call it a day. Did some abs and then 4 miles warmdown because I saw a friend who was just heading out for 4 easy. Lost my keys beside the track though. Hopefully I will find them tomorrow in the light.
Ran the downtown 5k course and a bit around campus. I lost my keys at the hope high track yesterday so I went back there in the daylight to see if I could find them. Someone definitely took them because I know where I put them. How lame is that? What are they gonna do with my stupid keys? Was gonna go further but I got frustrated looking for my keys and just ran back after that. I don't need the mileage right now anyway. I have a workout tomorrow and will use the downtown 5k this weekend in place of a vo2max workout as well. I will probably hit 70 despite only 6 today. Next week I will hit only 50 probably because I will want to taper properly for the half. Workouts will be tenuous. I want to do a 20+ miler sometime next week but all I can imagine doing is the 5k on sunday, and a long run on tuesday or wednesday because the half is on saturday. Maybe I should do one of those crazy long runs that incorporated some threshold and marathon pace work. I also have friends in town on tuesday and one of them will want to run with me. So the workout will have to be wednesday. Ok, to the planning. 2 miles warmup sounds good. Then 2 miles at marathon pace followed by 1 mile at threshold and 1 mile easy x 5 = 22 miles. If I have to cut the last set of fast running and just jog it in that is fine, but I will go 11 miles out so I have no choice but to get back somehow.
Pretty much a breakthrough workout for me. I didn't struggle at all. I can feel my left achilles and my right hamstring a bit now but during the workout they were fine. A 14:50 guy came out to do the workout with us and after walking through the first one in 11:15 he decided to make it his business to string me along. In the second one he let me pull us through 5:58 in mile one and then took the lead and pulled me to a 5:48. And then in the third rep he took the lead after the second lap which was already 5:45 pace and kept us about there. I kept thinking despite feeling relaxed that I might blow up. But it didn't happen and I felt like I could have done another 3 at 5:54 pace. One thing was that is was the first legitamately cold workouts of the season at 55 degrees. I hope that the half marathon is like that or even colder. If 5:54 is really my threshold then I should be able to do 6:10 pace for the half which would be high 1:20. And while I am dreaming big, 6:06 pace is sub 1:20. If I extend my speed fairly well and continue to see training benefits I just might be able to do that. But for now I need to focus on the 5k this weekend. While it is not a goal race of mine, it looks like I can PR, so I will shoot for about 17:15.
This was pretty stupid. I meant to go for an 'easy' 13 with a guy from the running club. But this guy is the same guy who pushed the pace below 7 on a run 2 weeks ago. I needed to recover from the workout yesterday, but instead we averaged 6:52 pace for 13.1 miles. And it wasn't a very even pace either. We started out at 7:15 and then slowly dropped it over 10 miles to 6:40 and then slowed a bit to 6:50, 7:05, and 7:15 for the last mile which is mostly a hill. I am glad that I can keep this sort of pace the day after a workout, but it isn't good training. I guess daniels says that marathon pace can be substituted for easy pace occaisionally. So hopefully it wont hurt me in the long run, just for tomorrow's 5k which I was already running through in a serious way.
