Sorry for the delay, things have been so busy in the last couple of weeks! When I've had the time to update the blog I haven't been able to find the energy, and when I've had the energy somehow I just couldn't find the time. But I am home recovering from a routine medical procedure today & taking the opportunity to get a couple of new posts up!
My Giant Race 10K race report is up! My race was not great and also the race *itself* was not great, so if you want to go read about all the hilarious reasons why, be my guest!
In the mean time, let us review my last training week before that race and how it went down.
Probably the most notable run this week was Wednesday's threshold run -- three 1200m's @ LT pace plus three 200m's. Usually I'd default to doing this kind of work on the track but lately I've been trying to adhere more to the "train where you race kind of mentality," ie., if you're targeting road races, you should try to do as much of your training on the roads as you can. Which doesn't mean you can never run on the track and if the workout is all short intervals generally I'll still go to the track for that (mostly because it's a lot harder to dodge people on the roads when you're running almost all-out). But 1200m's seemed like something I should do on the roads if possible (Golden Gate Park is great for this because there are miles of long, wide, pedestrian-only roads with some short, gentle, completely runnable hills) and surely I could handle three .12-.13-mile strides in that environment as well.I was supposed to run the 1200m's between 7:07-7:17 pace, which is pretty close to what I often run mile repeats at--hard, but not awful. But everything is a bit easier on the track, so I was expecting these 1200m's to feel pretty uncomfortable. But...they didn't? I kept thinking my effort level was too easy and then I'd see sub-7:00 on my watch and think, "OK, pull it back there, Chief." On the last one I kept constantly being like, "OK slow it down, slowww it down, slowwwww it down," and yet:
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I was expecting the "200m's" after to be kind of slow (wasn't sure how fast I could move my legs after those 1200m's) -- I don't put a lot of stock in manual .12-mile splits but in any case, I feel pretty confident that they were all in the low 40s, which is good for me (especially after some longer intervals). It just seemed like suddenly I had gears for days, like even if I felt like I was running pretty hard, I could usually find something else just a bit faster, and it kind of shocked me every time.
The best workout to do four days before racing a 10K? Probably not. But it still gave me some longer-term confidence.
~*~*~ The Giant Race 10K - Race Week!! ~*~*~
Grand Total: 26.5 miles
- * 16.75 easy
* 0.75 speed
* 3 tempo/threshold
* 6 race
Monday 8/15: Rest
Tuesday 8/16: 1 hour strength + 3 easy.
Wednesday 8/17: 2.5 warm up, 3 x (1200m @ LT pace / 400m jog), 3 x (200m / 200m), 2.85 cool down = 9 total.
Thursday 8/18: 5 easy + 4 x 100m strides 3 easy. Man I was just wrecked on Thursday in a way I can barely describe. I slept fine but still spend the day feeling completely exhausted both physically and mentally. I could barely stay awake, barely work for even half an hour at a time, and as soon as I headed out on my five mile easy run I was questioning whether I'd even make it a mile. There are times when it benefits you to push through but after doing this for so long I could tell that this was more a matter of being in some kind of hole for reasons I didn't totally understand. And when you find yourself in a hole, the first order of business is to stop digging (er, especially three days before a race!).
Friday 8/19: Rest. Feeling much better after 11 hours of sleep!
Saturday 8/20: 3.5 easy + 4 x 100m strides = 4 total. Combined the shakeout run with packet pickup by jogging to BART, then from BART to the Ballpark, then did it all in reverse plus a few strides. I'll admit my legs still felt pretty tired when I first left home for BART, but after a mile or so things started to feel a bit better.
Sunday 8/21: 2 warm up + Giant Race 10K 6 Miler!! = 8 total
Past Training Journals:
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