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Thursday, August 27, 2009

Insert Fail Whale Here

Oh hey....well that actually worked. To say that I was nervous about this morning's workout would be an understatement. It's probably the workout that seemed the most "scary" out of all of them when I clicked print back in June. Speedwork: 8 miles (WTF?!?!?!? For serious???) 4 x 1600 @ 7:37, with 800 m recovery and 1 mile warm up, 1 mile cool down.

In my world, 8 miles and speed work do NOT go together. Last night I had am A-MA-ZING meal for fuel for the run. Speaking of, after I was having my glass of Pinot Noir for dessert, I remembered that I had promised pics of my sweet dinner. Whoopsies. Have no fear, I managed to spill most of the glass of wine on the floor after this realization. No use crying over spilled wine!!! Umm...unless it's the last of your wine...and your carpet is white. Then cry. I ate grilled salmon, with a ginormo salad with 1/4 of an avocado and some mango pieces on a huge bed of lettuce. Unfortunately, SOMEONE removed the lid from the dressing, so I ended up with waaaaaaaaaaay too much dressing on my delicious little salad, so I just added more lettuce to even it out. :p

I woke up this morning at 7:45am to get psyched for my run. I twittered, facebooked, checked my email, checked the weather (60 degrees, cool, fabulous) until I finally kicked my butt out the door.

My warm up mile was great! Haha. I felt like I was going much slower than my split showed, but legs felt fairly good, minus some quads pain/tenderness that was still lingering from Tuesday's Speedy Seven. My first "fast" mile was good. Every time I looked at my pace, it was showing slightly over 7 minute miles. I actually thought I was going to come in under my goal pace (I gave myself 7:37-7:47). This is definitely a pace that I don't practice much (or haven't lately) as this is around my 5k pace, and even when I was doing 5k training I was either running much faster than this (400 repeats) or slowerfor long runs/easy runs. Somehow my body must've felt the pace, because I came in right at 7:37. Well look at that. :)

The 1/2 mile recovery jog in between HURT. My quads were sooooooo tight. I got started on Mile repeat #2. It was definitely more difficult to maintain the pace that felt pretty strong the repeat before, but I still managed to come in under time, 7:44. During the last quarter mile of this, I vowed to myself that if I could finish this mile in the goal time, I would be done doing my mile repeats, and I was true to my word.

I decided to switch and do 4 x 800 with 400 jog in between them. I did one and almost died. :( I did the 800 at a 7:53 pace and I hurt. The whole time I was running this 800 I had convinced myself I was going to injure myself by continuing. I pulled my right quad the first indoor track meet of the year in high school my junior year and was out for 8 weeks, basically the whole season. I really freaked myself out and decided just to finish the rest of the 8 miles so I could be on track for my monthly mileage goal (> last months: 130).

I felt like I was crawling, but was still running at a decent clip (????). I guess that will happen when you're running that fast of repeats, but still. I ended up doing another 1.3 mile cooldown (??) before calling it quits, vowing to run my Tuesday easy 6 on Monday to get my miles in. :)

I ended up doing 5.6 miles in 48:28 for a pace of 8:40.

1. Warmup 9:22
2. Interval #1 7:37
.50 Recovery 4:50 (9:50 pace)
3.5 Interval #2 7:44
.28 Recovery (meant to do .25 but forgot to look @ the clock) 2:43 (9:43 pace)
.50 Interval #2 1/2 3:57 (7:54 pace)
4.29-5.6 Cooldown 1 mile--9:22, .31--2:50 (9:09 pace)

Sooo that was confusing to type, so good luck if you're actually trying to understand it.

I think this training run gives me some valuable information to consider when I'm trying to figure out my December 1/2 marathon training plan. If a training session sounds TOO HARD, I will psych myself out of doing it. It should be just challenging enough to get me to fight to conquer it, not cower in the corner and quit. Also, 4 x 1600 speed repeats? Nada. I'm not even sure how this sort of a training run would be relevant for my race. I think 1600 m repeats are good, but 4 is a bit daunting. I think it would've been better if I set out to do 2 x 1600 and 2 x 800. Maybe thrown in some 400 for variety.

I'm also slightly concerned because my mileage had been increasing by about 10% each week, but since I've missed/cut short almost one run a week since the WWR, I'm currently running just shy of 30 miles/week. This week has 38 (now only 35.6 b/c of Quitter McGee). Should I adjust my mileage on some easy runs in the next two weeks so I'm not increasing by that much? If I get hurt in the final two weeks I'm going to be maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad. :p

Mock half marathon on Saturday! Super pumped, as I've never ran farther than 12 miles as a training run, and I'm going to run the race route (a race I've ran 4 other times, so I'm fairly familiar with). I might even make Taylor come out to do some mock-cheering practice.

Oh ya, go here http://chicrunner.com/ to get info. on how to win a sweet iFitness belt. Also, if I don't win, this would be an excellent gift for Xmas/Birthday for me. (is anyone else noticing how this blog is becoming a gift wishlist for me? hmmm... :p)

7 comments:

  1. Oh yes, those 1600's suck big time. One time my schedule had 10 miles total including 5 1600's. Yeah, I couldn't finish all of those guys! I think you were smarter to cut yourself off rather than risk getting injured!

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  2. The 1600 repeats are the worst! I laughed at your 8 mile speedwork. I thought the same thing forever until I started my most recent training program.

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  3. 4 mile repeats sounds insane to me too! 2 is enough - you need some variety, and 800s are so much more manageable. Speedwork is one of those days on the schedule(in my opinion) that is Much more flexible. training without them only means you're pace won't get *that much* faster - totally up to you! ;)

    blog wishlist?! not a bad idea miss J. haha

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  4. That sounds like an intense workout. I don't envy you.

    (Harrison wants me to say that he does the same workout.)

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  5. i totally agree with you! good job for getting out there and getting a good workout in. i have 4x1-mile coming up this training round and it is daunting. the good news is i have done 3x1-mile at least twice so i am slightly "ready" to add that one more. i would say def start with 2 and go to 3 ... before 4. and for sure go with a ladder!!!! it's really whatever you are pumped up to do!!

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  6. me and speedwork have just never been friends. I may try to reacquaint myself this fall..icccckk.

    DUDE i made the header, I need some props for that :)

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  7. 1600 repeats sound pretty killer. Way to knock them out!

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