If I Could Go a Little Faster.

WRNR 2013 - Race Plan

Race Plan:

Beginning: Stay relaxed and use the first mile as the last piece of your warm-up. In the past 2 races this year you’ve shot out at 5:45 pace, but haven’t been able to maintain it. Don’t be a cannon! 1st mile - 6:05-6:10 

Middle: From mile 2 to mile 4, the focus is on staying in the core race pace range 5:58-6:02 per mile. Stay as relaxed as possible and using as little energy as possible. Focus in the mile your in, don’t worry about what is next or what has happened. Stay in the moment. Don’t get “racey” on this part.

End: Okay, the last mile, take it a minute at a time. Think of it as a progressive mile. Use the competition to help you, focus on staying with someone, catching someone, or pulling away from someone. If you are having a great day here is where you pour it on, not before this. Remember you’ll be hurting, but ask yourself if you have anything left? The answer is usually yes! 5th mile - 5:54

Goal Time: sub 31 min.

April 18, 2013 Update

Woo.

These past few weeks have been tough. Everything just seemed out of control. At what point I was just so unmotivated. I didn’t put much thought into training so I did whatever for a like a week’s worth of specific training.. The consequences for that will be paid later, I know it. haha.

Anyways, I’m back and my life is steady!

I am now 9 days! 9 DAYS from my goal race!

We are now in GOAL RACE sight, so I have cut back on mileage, but with enough key workouts to keep fitness levels where they should be. Here is what the rest of my taper phase looks like:

Thursday, April 18th

30 min. easy

Friday, April 19th

6-9 miles easy. I will decide based on how I’m feeling.

Saturday, April 20th

30 min. easy

Sunday, April 21st

7 miles easy w/ 10x150m strides @ mile effort

Monday, April 22nd

30 min. easy

Tuesday, April 23rd

6 miles easy

Wednesday, April 24th

30 min. easy

Thursday, April 25th

4 miles easy w/ 10x200m. recovery at personal sensation

Friday, April 26th

Pre-race

Saturday, April 27th

White Rock N Roll 5 miler!!

Specific Phase Week 2

I have been SLACKING!

Didn’t put much thought into my workouts these week.

However, I did have some really good workouts like:

• 3x(600+500+400+300+200) 104%, 105%, 106%, 109%, 113%
• 20 min warmup + 15k @ 88%

This week WILL be better.

A Bad Week

So the first week of the specific phase was pretty bad. I missed a couple of key workouts which really frustrates me. I know there isn’t a perfect training cycle, and that i’ll get over it. Still…

I’m not sure how my legs are going to react for tomorrow’s workout. Actually, I haven’t even planned this week’s scheduled.

Anyways, I’m hoping these past three days of zero running recovered the problems I was having.

I hope this 2nd week of specifics goes better.  

Rock N Roll 5 Mile Specific Phase 3/17-3/23

Starting to feel better from the last couple of runs. I started doing more stretches, and extensive drills after my runs.

I was pretty scared going into my workout for today. I jogged my way to the track so that I could warm-up up there, and boy was it difficult running. My left calf was hurting, and my right ankle was giving me troubles. Luckily, after warming up right it, it ended up going away by the middle of my workout.

Here is this week’s training. I based the percentages off of the goal pace I want to run that day. 

Sunday 17th: 60 min. progressive run

* Great workout. Hot day. 8:21 pace dropping down to 6:17 pace. 

Monday 18th: 2x3km @ 94% + 2x2km @ 97% + 8x500m @ 105%

*This was a long, but great workout overall. I was having trouble finding the paces for the 3k and 2k repeats, and ended up being off by a couple of seconds. The 500 repeats were all on target. 

Tuesday 19th: 45 min. regeneration run

*I was dead for this recovery. My calves were hurting like crazy even while running very, very… very slow. Ended it at 25 min.

Wednesday 20th: 60 min. @ moderate effort

*Another frustrating day. Only 30 min. of moderate running. Felt like I was running on bricks. 

Thursday 21st: 70 min. fartlek with 20-45 seconds of hard effort every 2 min.

* 20 min. of wild paces. 20 min. of diagonals. Not so bad.

Friday 22nd: 4x(600+500+400+300+200) 104%, 105%, 106%, 109%, 113%

*No run. Core circuit planned.

Saturday 23rd: 45 min. regeneration run

*No run. =/

Brutal 15k

Uh oh.

I don’t think I can do this.

Why do I feel like I’m dragging my legs?

Should I turn back?

These were my thoughts as I began running today’s scheduled run. 

The plan was to run the 15k loop around the same pace I had been running my medium long runs in the past. 7:30-7:50 per mile.

I couldn’t. I felt like my legs were noodles and just couldn’t go. I seriously felt like turning back around 25 min. into my run, and walking all the way back to my car. That didn’t sound like much fun. I don’t know what motivated me, but I made it to the point of no return and HAD to finish.

I’m blaming it on my track workout from Tuesday which was:

Warm up + 1600m + 2 x 1200m + 3 x 800m + 2 x 400m + cool down.

My pace was around 5:44-5:50 for the repeats which was probably wrong since I’m not suppose to touch that pace until later in the cycle. It had been awhile since we had good weather, and probably ended up getting to excited.

Anyways, I did end up finishing the 15k around 1:16:26 or 8:12 pace. 

I hope my legs feel better soon. I’ll be doing some stretch routines later tonight after I study. My specific phase is coming up next week, and that’s when I’m really going to be putting in work. 

9th Annual Trinity River Levee Run

This morning I had a 5k race over at the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge.

I headed out around 5:40 a.m. to the race pavilion in order to get the best parking since the event was expecting to be loaded up and down.

Finding a parking space? Ain’t nobody got time for that.

Anyways I got there around 6 a.m. to relax in the car, and focus while jamming out to System of a Down. I had planned to break my 5k record of 18:40 on this race, but was kind of nervous about it since the weather conditions were terrible. 34 degrees, and 20 MPH winds.

Around 7 a.m. I headed out to do some easy running to warm up and check out the course. While I was outside I was FREEZING. I couldn’t even coordinate my hands to tie my shoes.

Once I changed into my race clothes I did some drills and 2 strides. This helped me warm up better.

I got to the starting line probably 2 minutes before the gun went off, and got a good spot in the front. The gun went off and I went off at a pace that I felt like I was jogging, or maybe my legs were so numb I couldn’t feel them doing work? It was weird. I was in the leading pack probably around 6th place within 800m into the race. The reason I though my pace felt so easy was because there wasn’t a mile marker for the first mile. At one point I checked my watch and it was in the late 7:50s. I seriously was about to do some internal yelling when I saw I hadn’t passed a mile marker yet. I noticed there were only 2 guys infront of me so I focused on catching one since I wasn’t dying yet.

Once I caught up to one of the guys that I thought was in 2nd we made a turn and saw the 2 mile marker with the time displayed. When I passed it I looked at my watch and read…

11:50 =)

I got pumped! There was about a 50-70 meter gap between the guy I thought was first so I tried to pick it up, and go for the 1st place. At this point, my face was numb! I couldn’t feel a thing AKA boogers.

Once we turned back to the bridge there was a moderate hill left to take care of. It was difficult, this is probably where the guy I thought was 1st put a bigger gap on me. (The reason I say “thought” is because apparently there was another guy who dusted all of us.) I tried sprinting as soon as I saw the finish line, but it felt like I was running the same.

I ended up finishing the course in about 18:23, 17 seconds taken off of my old record, and a 3rd overall!!!=) 5:55 per mile. My best performance yet!! My splits show that I passed the 3rd mile in 17:45. If I can fit another 2 miles in this, I could get 29:35 for the 5 miles, which would be pretty amazing.

Now we got 7 weeks until my goal race, and I haven’t even touched the speed phase of my cycle! This is good, this is really good.

The Ladder

On Tuesday I had my first track workout scheduled. It’s been awhile since I’ve done some repeats on the track. The last one was possibly early October before the Komen race.

The night before I was already NOT looking forward to doing this workout because of the crazy winds we had been having, and I had to do it in the morning? Agh.

The workout was warm up + 1600m + 2 x 1200m + 3 x 800m + 4 x 400m + warm down. (400m recovery for the 1600m, 1200m, 800m and 200m recovery for the 400s.)

1600m: 5:54

1st 1200m: 4:26, 2nd 1200m. 4:36

800m: 2:57

After this I was already dying by the butt kicking the wind was giving everytime I turned to the straight way.

I literally walked away from the track and was about to call it a day, but then told myself “Is that all you got?”

oh yea. 

I decided to end with another 800 and came in at 2:58, and the 2 400s in 1:25 and 1:30

After that I did call it a day :P

If I’m not mistaken that’s 20:01 for the 6400m a.k.a 3.9 miles. Which comes out to 5:02 per mile. If only I could that in a single run. SOON =) I think on a good day this workout would’ve been complete and more comfortable.

New 4 mile PR

Today I broke my 4 mile record in my steady-state run!
25:52 for the 4 miles. The pace felt very comfortable, and I wasn’t breathing for my life.

I love good workouts like these.

2 Days Into the Fundamental Phase

On Sunday I scheduled myself a 12 mile long run with the last 3 miles up-tempo. The goal for the up-tempo segment was to run around 6:45-6-55 per  mile. This was a mistake. I feel like I should have lowered it down to a 9 mile run instead. The last 3 miles of the 12 were nowhere near my goal. they were around 7:09ish per mile. 

I was pushing HARD. I started hurting till the point where I stopped at 11.8 miles. I’m pretty sure that split would’ve been terrible, I felt like I was working, but was getting no good speed. 

Sunday was a hard day, I had to go to work like 40 minutes after I finished. Probably got 2 minutes of rest before clocking in, but I made it through my shift.

Monday’s workout was good. 40 min. of running + 6x200m repeats at mile effort. It’s been awhile since I ran fast, and it feels good =)