Baamoral to Lucan - 4.5 Miles: 36.59

I ran from home to the office today. The temperature was about 18 degrees C (I'm guessing). Here are my splits:

8:14
8:15
8:15
8:10
8:13 (1/2 mile)

It felt like a pretty good run. Obviously tough on the uphill segments (which was about half of the run).

Overall, the pace was 8:13. Not terrible, not great. But my goal is to get this well under 8 minutes per mile by the time I hit Ragnar Relay Vegas (Baby!).

7 x 1 mile repeats

I forgot to save my splits tonight. But we were working at the UWO 400 m. track doing our 1 mile repeats. To the best of my knowledge, here are my splits:

7:12
7:11
7:10
6:58
7:12
7:35
7:28

This is pretty close, anyhow. I started out working for 7:20/miles, so I'm reasonably happy with how I did. But I know I have to get better as the training progresses.

6 x 1 mile Repeats

Tonight, John Ferguson had us doing 1 mile repeats at Gibbon's park. With my hamstring issue, I wasn't sure how much I wanted to push things. I couldn't remember what I'd done in the past. John said to look at your target marathon pace and take off 30 seconds to 1 minute per mile. My target for a 3:30 or 3:25 marathon would be 8 minutes or 7:52 per mile. So I figured targeting a 7:20 pace would not be terrible. He had us doing a 2:30 break at a jog between repeats.

As it turns out, I wasn't able to run that slowly (at least at the beginning). Here are my splits:

7:08
7:11
7:15
7:11
7:12
7:11

Looking back a year and I was consistently banging off sub-7 minute miles during my repeats. I'm not sure that I could have done that tonight, but I was happy that I kept pretty consistent repeats for tonights workout. It gives me a benchmark for future workouts. Based on these numbers, though, I'm at 97% of where I was last year. Hopefully by November, I'm back to 100%!

Fartleks around Gibbons Park

We did fartleks ("speed play" in Swedish) around Gibbons Park tonight. The concept is to go fast for a certain distance, then slow to recover, and repeat. In this case, we ran fast for roughly 400 m., took a break for about 300 m., then fast for 600 m. and then another 300 m. break.

Here are my "fast" segments:
2:17
2:55

2:17
2:52

2:11
2:44

2:08
2:42

2:09
2:53

As you can see from the times above, I generally got faster with each lap -- until the very last one where I was just barely faster than my first 600 m(-ish) lap. Part of the reason that I got faster was that a young woman that was in the group, Christine, and I kept pushing each other to keep up an aggressive pace. But she stopped after 4 pairs of repeats so my last one wasn't quite as fast.

After this, The Legendary John Ferguson had us do hill repeats up the road down into the park. While I could feel my hamstring during the fartleks, I could _really_ feel it during the hill repeats. But you could tell that the faster runners definitely had the best strength and speed on the hill repeats.

Then 20 push-ups, 20 situps and 3 minutes of a plank.

So, since my hamstring didn't blow up on me, I'm pretty happy with how the workout ended!

Did a Ladder tonight. 400 m laps x 1, 2, 3, and 4 (so, 1600 m.) and then back down 3, 2 and 1 400 m. lap. Here are my splits:

400: 1:37 (3:57/k pace)
800: 3:31 (4:18/k)
1200: 5:18 (4:23/4:17/k)
1600: 7:06 (4:25/4:20/k)
1200: 5:32 (4:37/4:27)
800: 3:34 (4:23/k)
400: 1:39 (4:05/k)

So, not awful. The hamstring wasn't bugging me much -- and if it did, I just worked through it. I was particularly happy with my last two laps where I was tired and a bit sore, but kept working through it. Comparing to last year (see August 2011 blog posts), I was 3:27 for 800m. and 1:34 for 400 m. So just a few seconds per lap slower.

Parloff Relay

Jenny and I did a Parloff Relay today at Runner's Choice speed work, held at TD Waterhouse Stadium in London today. We did 400 m. loops of the track and passed off the baton to each other. Here were our times: 1:31 (Bruce) 1:42 (Jenny) 1:33 (Bruce) 1:39 (Jenny) 1:32 (Bruce) 1:36 (Jenny) 1:38 (Bruce) 1:36 (Jenny) 1:35 (Bruce) 1:34 (Jenny) 1:33 (Bruce) 1:33 (Jenny) 1:32 (Bruce) 1:29 (Jenny) 1:31 (Bruce) 1:30 (Jenny) 1:31 (Bruce) These times are pretty close to what I was doing a year ago -- except that Jenny was fast enough that I had to do a 9th lap this time. But for the first 8 laps, I was only off last year's total time by 21 seconds -- and 11 of those were in the 8th lap. While I could feel the hamstring, I still felt like I had acceptable speed and strength. I'm now not worrying about potentially pulling it since I don't have a goal race in mind. If I make it sore by working it really hard, it should repair itself to be even stronger.

Mizuno's Mezamashii Run Project

I don't generally talk about my running gear, although I definitely have my favourites. Like my Race Ready running shorts & shirts, my Sugoi "Canada" singlet from Runners Choice in London, and my UnderArmour socks. And my Mizuno running shoes.

I've been wearing Mizuno running shoes for several years, now. I literally run them into the ground. My pair of Mizuno Wave Nexus 4 got me through my Personal Best in the Road To Hope Marathon in 2010. My pair of Mizuno Wave Inspire 7 runners got me through the Big Heat of Boston in 2012. And my current pair of running shoes I purchased from the legendary John Ferguson at Runner's Choice -- the Mizuno Wave Elixir 7 shoes -- are unbelievably light. They should either allow me to set a Personal Best in the Road To Hope Half Marathon in November, or possibly (if I decide to do a full marathon then) I can re-qualify for Boston.

Mizuno is currently heavily campaigning on their Mezamashii Run Project. From MizunoCda.com, "Mezamashii is the Japanese word for eye-opening, or brilliant. The Mezamashii Run Project is our quest to deliver a more brilliant running experience to dedicated runners everywhere." And as a long time Mizuno wearer, I can vouch for the fact that these shoes are excellent.

Mizuno's goal is to simply get more people to consider the Mizuno shoes, and they are relying on social media and current Mizuno customers to help them get the word out. You can get more information on the Mezamashii Run Project here.