High-Octane

Tough workouts these, especially on tired legs. When the authors talk about cross training I don't think they had 65 mile bike rides in mind! :-) I was looking at the book again last night. They would have me doing mile repeats at a 5:35 pace! Crazy.

You'll get there.

Really good job.

Nice workout! I'll bet without that 65 mile hard ride in your legs that you would have hit your goal. Hitting the times that you did though on tired legs is impressive and will probably give you some good benefits. Just make sure you don't go out too hard again tomorrow in your cross training.

Der Hammer...Ouch..5:35

Tomorrow I plan on about 25 miles on the bike. This will be longer than suggested for the cross training but I'll keep if fairly easy.

Thought you might like this read:

http://www.drmirkin.com/fitness/triathalon_injuries.html

Something that we do in our group is always start the first repeat +10-15 seconds, and hit the next one at goal or close to it, and then at goal pace. You may want to try something like that, where you start a bit slower and end the workout at or a bit faster than the goal - always teaching the body to end strong. When you have that mastered you could start to drop the times by a few seconds on the first repeats, until they are all equal. Just a thought I had while I was out on my run. :-)

DH,

Quickly read the article, it makes a lot of sense. I think the repeat suggestion is good. I'll try that next time. Part of my problem is I'm kinda in no man's land when it come to these type workouts, really not knowing what I can or can't do. I think in a few weeks I'll have a better feel. Sometimes I think I'm Flash Gordon when I'm really Mr Slow Mo :-)

Do you run your repeats on a track? One thing that helped me was to figure out before hand what the 200m and 400m splits should be for the distance I was running. For example, if I am running 800s @ 2:45, I know at the 200m I need to be at 41 seconds at at 400m I need to be at 1:22-1:23. If I hit those then I know I am at the right pace, too fast and I slow down a bit, too slow and I speed up. Of course, one needs to be running the repeats on a track to do this easily.

Having just read your account of Tour DeGruene, I'm not too surprised you weren't at your best. But still close to the paces, and I'm guessing the important thing is that you worked yourself at the proper intensity level. Nice run.

Great job, this workout will quickly become very doable for you, and I really don't think you will have much problem meeting your marathon goal, if the weather is at all decent in FW that day.

Flat,

Ha ha... I have a back-up plan for OKC again if Ft Worth isn't good :-) I just have to hope my joints stay glued together!

I'm a whimp! I looked at the workouts and just got scared. I can see that it would make you sharp speed wise... your a tough Texan.

Nice fast miles!

Rye, I don't know about a "tough Texan"...I think it's more of being hard headed :-)

Thanks JG, not quite what I planned or wanted to do but ok for now.

I probably would not have gotten out of bed if I rode 65 miles as fast as you did! We'll never know though, cuz I cant ride that fast! :)

So I entered another half marathon on Dec. 4th in Dallas.

Der Hammer,

I forgot to answer one of your questions...Yes I am able to run my repeats on the high school track but there is only one street light near the track so it's really dark. As I run I try and check my times but I have to keep pushing the button on my garmin to light it up. I'm sure you're aware this is annoying when trying to run reasonably fast. On this run I just faded and run as hard as I could without completly killing myself. We'll see if I can come closer to the marks with fresher legs in the future.

I think that is a good race for you, I would scratch Austin ... I know it is close to you, but nothing to gain running a half one week before your marathon ... & lots to risk!

IJR - you can set the backlight to stay on longer - I can't remember what the max time is. Go to: Settings > General > Display. Set the backlight time out.

In use, once you press power one time the backlight will stay on for the time that you have set. Very helpful when running in the dark!

JG,

The only reason I left Austin Livestrong on the list is that is a day in my training that I'm supposed to run 10 miles @ MP. I was thinking this would be a good run to do that. I could either jog or walk the last 3.1 miles.

DH,

Thanks for the info....These watches sure have a lot of features. I'm still learning. I just realized I could set one field as an overall "Avg. Pace", I like that feature too.

That makes sense, maybe jog the first 2 miles as a warmup & then finish with a mile cooldown. You just have to be careful not to get caught up in the race. If your marathon pace is 7:30, you really do not want to run any of the miles faster than that, even though it may feel easy. The idea of that workout is to be comfortable with marathon pace, but technically you are still tapering, so anything harder will be detrimental to your race a week later. On December 4th on the other hand ... go for broke! :)

December 4th.... 1:33:xx

I like the overall "ave pace" field too. That and the "lap pace" set at 1 mile laps are the two that I look at 90% of the time.

If I tried that I would definitely get caught up in the race. :-)

Fell short? Dang! Those are some fast miles. I honestly don't think I could run anywhere near that fast for a full mile....more like .2 and then back to a normal pace for 5 minutes to recover. haha! Nice run, especially if your legs were already tired.

DH & Dave make good suggestions on the watch ... I race with 4 windows ... time, distance, avg. pace, & lap pace ... with laps auto @ 1 mile. Avg pace is the main guideline, but it is really helpful to know your pace for any given mile, particularly when there are elevation changes where you might be looking for a faster or slower splits based on elevation profile.

With reference to track workouts, I turn off Autolap & hit the lap button at every 100 meters, when you do this it automatically turns your light on & gives you a pop-up window with your last lap time ... this way with a quick glance I know if I need to pick it up or back off every 100 meters. Best part is the more you do this, you will better learn your pace ... and before you know it, you start hitting your pace right on target ... but always good to know if you are slipping or pushing the limit to much.

Breaking down a 6:08 pace to 23 seconds per 100 makes that pace seem much easier to me ... and even though it gets harder as the mile goes on, mentally it is easier to tackle 100 meters at a time for me!

I look forward to targeting 19 seconds per split ... because that is what I am going to have to do to keep pace with Alex! :) I will have '911' programmed into my speed dial though!!