4.5 Mile Easy Run

Brian and I did a 4.5 mile easy run today in order to try to get some of the cobwebs out of our systems. Having done speed work the night before, we took it easy and just ran around Lucan. It was windy and cold, but bearable.

Our pace was roughly 8:40 per mile. My legs felt pretty beat-up, though, as I really didn't have a lot more than that pace in me.

Speed Work - 7 x 400 + 2 x 200 m.

Tonight was our first official speed work session of the 2013 Winter season. My goal race is Around the Bay -- 30K. John Ferguson had us doing 7 repeats of 400 m. followed by 2 repeats of 200 m. (with a 200 m. rest break in between each repeat) at the Thompson Arena track at Western.

I was targeting 1:40 per 400 m. and 45 seconds for the 200 m. loops at the end. Here are my splits:

1:30
1:38
1:40
1:39
1:40
1:35
1:31
0:43 (200 m.)
0:42 (200 m.)

As you can see, I started to ramp up the speed for the last few repeats. Compare these times to my times a year ago (2 months after my hamstring injury) and there is no question that I've almost fully recovered. In fact, I wouldn't say that my right hamstring was any more stressed during the last laps than other parts of my legs (right hip, left calf).

So far, training is off to a good start!

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.