Nice work to CR/Patrick and EricRuns! Eric, good luck this weekend.
Sure makes me miss my favorite seasonal sport - fall XC. One of the local high schools had their area Twilight meet Wednesday evening. I took the boy to go watch and hearing his enthusiasm and excitement about wanting to run XC someday is great. Although the course sucked for a runner, it was an awesome spectator set-up. And it was a bonus that Chris Derrick was back in town. He brought Evan Jager with him so they were both there at the meet.
I was amazed at the difference of how the XC atmosphere is now vs when I went through. A couple of the teams at this meet were 100+ strong. Heck, we had 1200-1300 kids in our school and we were lucky to get 15 guys to run XC. Out of my class of 283, there were only 3 guys that ran. Makes a huge difference when you have that many more people interested in it.
Post marathon (33 days ago) and my workouts since that race have all been kind of stale and uninspiring, and left me looking for mojo – nothing I’ve been doing has been “working”. Great thing about logs is, you can look back to a time when things were working. Dusted off the on/off stuff I was doing in the spring when things were really clicking for me. After short warmup, did 10 x 3’ on 1’ off. Forgot how much I like that workout. It goes by in a blur, the jog rests are too short to think much, you can make it as hard as you want, it’s long enough to have to really dig a bit at the end, and there’s just plenty of really fast cruising, and not really worrying about going a certain distance (especially since not doing it on a track) – all good stuff.
Come all you no-hopers, you jokers and roguesWe're on the road to nowhere, let's find out where it goes
Post marathon mojo can really be hard to find. You're on the right track going to your strengths and the things you like about training.
As an aside, I find on/off workouts the hardest for me. With the on/off workouts I set my watch to beep at 3 min and then again at 1 min and I find myself, anticipating the 'beep'. I start to get anxious and think it's never coming I'll be running this hard pace FOR ETERNITY! I suppose I'm better at estimating distance-to-end than I am time-to-end.
Ahh, anticipating the watch 'beep' ... good times that. The other day a friend and I were just finishing up a trail 10miler and we both had Garmins on. Had about a 1/2 mile to go when we met up with another friend who had just finished his run and was doing a short cooldown and he decided to finish up with us. We were going pretty fast, much faster than he wanted to do his cooldown. We said that we'd go till one of our watches beeped at 10miles and call it a day. So we're hammering along the trail and, of course, time isn't moving forward at all! Our slower friend who was really extended yells out "C'mon, somebody beep already!" I laughed.
Mbehr, that's pretty cool. Always wondered what an XC race was like. Very nice that the pros came out.
With that recent blowup from the article in the WSJ wondering where all the fast guys are... I think this is the answer, or at least one of the answers.. They are growing up. There is a huge generation of fast kids coming through.. just watch out. And women's athletics, in general, is going to get much much better.
Did a Spaniel workout.. 10 mile tempo at MP. Almost died at the end. Not sure why most of the last 2-3 miles was pitched uphill. Who set up this course?
And we run because we like itThrough the broad bright land
9 mile tempo at MP on Thursday in steady wind and rain (12 miles total with warm-up and cool-down). I locked in my pace pretty well (which I've been doing better at lately), but the bigger takeaway for me was that I did it in less than ideal conditions. If I can do that, then I think I can tackle my first marathon too.
Nice. I've got a similar run coming up on my schedule (10 miles at MP). The same workout last spring was huge for validating my goal pace for my first marathon. Sounds like you're on target -- good luck!
Ran 10x1km intervals this morning with 60 second recoveries. Hit the first a little over HMP (about 7:00) and the last around 6:30 with negative splits all the way. I have a rocky relationship with the track -- I've hurt myself more than once running intervals. It was good to finish feeling tired but strong -- not beat up or out of my depth.
Feeling the growl again
Challenging workout given to me by Olympic steeplechaser Marc Davis. This was kind of an aggressive choice for this point in my return to real training:
1 mile hard, 3-5min recovery, 10X400m 60-90sec recovery, 3-5min recovery, 1 mile very hard
Result: 5:27, 1:18 avg on the 400s, 5:42. 3:30 on the longer recoveries and 90sec on the 400s. Slower than I had hoped but I was happy to make it through and finish the whole thing.
"If you want to be a bad a$s, then do what a bad a$s does. There's your pep talk for today. Go Run." -- Slo_Hand
I am spaniel - Crusher of Treadmills
Challenging workout given to me by Olympic steeplechaser Marc Davis. This was kind of an aggressive choice for this point in my return to real training: 1 mile hard, 3-5min recovery, 10X400m 60-90sec recovery, 3-5min recovery, 1 mile very hard Result: 5:27, 1:18 avg on the 400s, 5:42. 3:30 on the longer recoveries and 90sec on the 400s. Slower than I had hoped but I was happy to make it through and finish the whole thing.
Damn, that is a nice workout! I am hoping I can start doing speed workouts again soon. Every time I start running a bit faster I pay for it the next day.
That's 3 workouts not one
Nice job getting through this one. I think I remember you posting something about this one before.
I'm not sure I can remember the last time I even attempted that so your memory is better than mine. I can tell you I miss running sub-5s and 70s on it though.
Oh man that is a beauty.
"He conquers who endures" - Persius "Every workout should have a purpose. Every purpose should link back to achieving a training objective." - Spaniel
http://ncstake.blogspot.com/
Apparently my memory isn't even better. This is the one I was confusing it with. Both are good workouts and worth remembering.
"Old Bob Kempainnen workout on treadmill. 2mi wu, 8X0.5mi repeats @12mph with 90sec recoveries 5mph, then 1mi easy, then 4mi tempo 5:43 pace (10.5mph). 1mi cd."
So a week after our last track workout, the boy and I hit the oval again. Nothing special 8x400s but now we're under 1:30 and 4x200 blasts under 40. 1 mi wu and cd. The kid can go. 800s next week. I hate 800s.
quarters.. halfs.. you guys are killing it.
I tried 3 x 3 miles with a mile jog in between. Almost made it all the way through, and was battling in the second rep. but just couldn't will myself that last mile. Anyway, all considered.. Im pretty pleased.