Running into August

Day 214 - August 2, 2009

Another month has come to a close and with today's run, I have logged 214 consecutive days of running and 842 miles. Considering all of last year I only logged 880 miles, I am well on my way to surpassing that and I'm even on pace to set a new annual high (in 2005 I logged 1424 miles).

Today's run was a good mix of endurance and speed. I drove over to the Tech school, parked the car, and then ran 2.3 miles to the high school track for a warm-up. For the speed work-out I ran what I call a funnel. It starts with a longer distance, like a 1600m, and then decreases by 400m with each interval. The idea is to run each interval at a slightly faster pace. Today I started with a modest 6:33 1600m, and followed that up with a 4:48 1200m (6:24 pace); 3:03 800m (6:06 pace) and 1:23 400m (5:32 pace). For recovery, I jog a 400m lap in between intervals. I finished the workout with a 2.3 mile recovery run back to the car.

I like this type of speed workout because it gives me a chance to loosen up and get faster with each interval and I also get the endurance benefit of running longer intervals at the beginning. It also teaches you to run faster at the end of a race which can really help with your final kick. I'm hoping to continue running at least one speed workout a week to prepare myself for the fall 10K season. I'll keep you posted.

Some Speed Work

Day 207 - July 26, 2009

The wife and I both needed to get in a run tonight and the compromise was to head over to the track, where we can both run our own workouts and the kids can ride their bikes and play on the playgrounds.

It all started out great and the workout was awesome. I ran a mile and half warm-up around the school, and then started some 800 m repeats with a 400 recovery. The first felt good and I ran a respectable 3:03. The second felt a bit tougher and I thought I was slower, but when I checked my time, it was just under 3:01. I really pressed on the third, and broke the 3 minute mark at 2:59. I was all geared up for the 4th when it happened - nature was calling the girls and the school was all locked up. Workout over.

My wife was a half mile short of finishing her run, so I dropped her off at the edge of our neighborhood and she was able to complete her miles. When she got home, I headed out for a 2 mile run and ran my last unmeasured half mile after hitting the turnaround. The last "half mile" was a 3:24, but I'm sure it was long. A quick check of gmap-pedometer claims .54, but I usually figure that is good for plus or minus a tenth of a mile.

Either way, I still finished 5.5 miles, we both got in our workouts, and the girls had a good time racing us around the track (we have an asphalt track - I'd never let them ride on an all-weather track).

15s workout

Today I added some speed work to my running. I haven't done anything fast all year (including the race I ran on Jan 1) and my average workout pace shows it. I didn't feel like driving out to the track today so I decided I would do an interval run. I set my watch up to beep every 15 seconds and set out for a 5 minute warm-up. At exactly 5 minutes, I picked up the pace to run as fast as I could maintain for 15 seconds and when the watched beeped, I would return to normal pace for 45 seconds. I then repeated this routine every minute until I was about 3 minutes from the finish and could cool down. Today, that meant I ran 18 repeats. By the end, I was not fully recovering between intervals, but I wasn't completely dead either. The key was to make sure my recovery pace wasn't too slow or the workout will end up taking longer than a normal run. I think I did pretty good today - I finished in 25:51 compared to 25:45 on Thursday for the same run at normal pace.

As I get stronger, I'll switch to 20 seconds of speed and only 40 seconds of recovery and really concentrate on the keeping the recovery pace. Hopefully after a few weeks of this, my speed will start to improve.

Today's Run 3.6 miles (YTD 251 miles)
Today's time 0:25:51 (YTD 32:32:58)
Weekly mileage 35.6 miles