The weekend

6/8/2006 (continued)
I did 6 miles after work on Friday in addition to the 10 in the morning, because I had to wait for my wife to pick me up so we could go dancing on the a dinner cruise. It was for Kelly's work and truth be told, we didn't dance much. That's my fault. I really don't like doing it. We did get out there once, right before the lounge singing lady did her best rendition of "Last Dance," but it was a slow song so I was able to fake it.
6/9/2006
I was supposed to go do a 10K this morning, but I woke up and it was pouring out. I hadn't pre-registered for this thing, so there was really nothing forcing me to drag my butt out there to get soaked, so I skipped it. About 10AM I was really starting to beat myself up about wimping out, but it was too late at that point. Finally, in the mid-afternoon, I headed out to the track (the real track this time), and decided I would try a new workout.

I have a book at home called Running Tough that for the most part sits under my bed, untouched. However, on Saturday I pulled it out, dusted it off, and decided I would pick one of the workouts out of the book. Basically, what the book is, is a collection of 75 different workouts that elite runners do and some explanation of what you're trying to achieve with each workout, pacing, etc. It also has each workout classified as either LSD, recovery, intervals, or Tempo (there may be one more in there...I can't remember). So on Saturday I went to the Tempo section and paged through it until I found this one.

Go to the track and do two sets of 3 miles, alternating the pace with each lap between 5K race pace and marathon race pace. It really doesn't sound all that hard, but what it teaches your body to do, is to recover from the hard efforts while still at marathon pace. Hmm...could come in handy. So for simplicity, I said my 5k pace would be 75 sec quarters (which is probably too fast) and my marathon pace would be 90 second quarters (which is about right). I had to do even numbers just because I'm not that smart and I would have to be doing the math "on the run." I took off and came through the first mile right on pace @ 5:30 (75 + 90 + 75 + 90 = 5:30) with each of the individual laps coming within a second or two of where I should. The second mile was more of the same clocking in dead on at 11:00 minutes total. The last mile I really started to struggle keeping the 5K pace, but was pretty good about keeping the marathon pace segments and finished up in 16:35. I was tired, but not wiped out. I then jogged a mile and started on my second rep. The first mile was more of the same and I came through right on pace again at 5:30. After that though, the 5K pace segments became increasingly hard to maintain, and I was losing about 5 seconds every fast lap, but was still maintaining my 90 second recovery lap. I finished the second set at 16:48, which I was happy with. I cooled down for 2 miles to make it an even 10 for the day.

One thing that struck me as I was doing this workout, was this son and dad on the side of the track. This dad was absolutely killing his son making him do sprints up and down the stadium stairs, and then hopping up and down on the bleachers and every once in a while sprinkling in some boxing workout moves. The kid could hardly stand up-right but he was still trudging up and down the stairs as his dad yelled at him. Now, I'm not here to villify the dad. He knows his kid better than me, and maybe he needs to some extra prodding to motivate himself. What I realized was that this is what I was doing to myself last year. I would go and totally beat myself up 2 or 3 times a week with mile repeats or a tempo run that was really at race pace, but I had nothing to support myself. I had no real aerobic base to build off of. So while those sessions certainly did something for me, I wonder at what price. Maybe I was in constant dread of Tues. and Thurs. last year, because I wasn't ready for that kind of workout.

This year, things are definitely different. On Saturday I banged out a 16:35 and a 16:48 3 miler. I may have been able to do that last year, but it wouldn't have been as, oh I don't know what the word is, workman-like as this was. My PR for the 5K that I set last year was 16:52. The first set from my workout on saturday computes to about a 17:05 5K. For a workout. In the middle of the day. At the end of a 100 mile week. Something is happening.

Sorry that took so long to get out, but I've been thinking about it a lot over the weekend, and I had to get it down on paper (or whatever this is).
6/10/2006
10 miles at a recovery pace. I won't bore with anymore than that.

Weekly Mileage: 103 Miles
Avg. Mileage Per Run: 11.44 Miles
YTD Mileage: 1744 Miles

6/11/2006
17 miles on the way into work. I was, once again, going to do the middle 7 miles at marathon pace, but there was a huge headwind in my face and it was way too hard to maintain 6 min miles into it, so I turned the watch off and went by effort. The effort was there. I'll take it.

Somewhere during this run, I passed my 2005 yearly mileage total. In June.