Ladies,
I'm afraid I have to cop to something... tonight's workout was a bit of a paradigm shift. Ordinarily we would have done hill repeats, but since we were running a course that doesn't have hills, I needed to find something else that could raise the stress level a bit without doing too much. Given that we raced Monday and will again Saturday, I wanted something in the medium range.
The options are few on this type of course. About the only thing to vary is speed or distance (or both). I wanted to keep it in the 6-mile range... that's felt about right with the weather conditions. I started considering the options, looked at the calendar again, and realized it is time to begin doing speed work. Hence tonight's workout heralds the beginning of a new phase in the season.
Notice we did a long interval (1 mile) with rest? That rest roughly coincided with the hard portion. This is how it starts - long effort, longish rest interval. We will be shortening the distance, raising the speed, and shortening the rest soon. Ultimately my goal would be to have 6-8 x 800s at race pace.
Tonight was important because not only to we have to break into the process a bit gently at first, we also have to learn what paces feel like. I broke it roughly into two groups, one at 7-minute pace, the other at 8-minute, and I think you mostly landed on that. As it gets shorter and faster, it will require a great deal of concentration to stay on pace. It will also teach you what those paces feel like so you have a better chance of nailing them in a race.
If you pay attention to your form and breathing you should soon be able to guess your pace to within 10 seconds at any given time. This ability will vary a little depending on the weather, but it's fairly constant otherwise. If you know where your red line is (the point you blow up), then you should be able to pick a race pace that will keep you just under it, which should give you your optimum race pace.
Tomorrow will be an easy day. We will run Milwaukee at 4, just like we have all week. We'll be talking quite a bit about the race on Saturday. See you there!
I'm afraid I have to cop to something... tonight's workout was a bit of a paradigm shift. Ordinarily we would have done hill repeats, but since we were running a course that doesn't have hills, I needed to find something else that could raise the stress level a bit without doing too much. Given that we raced Monday and will again Saturday, I wanted something in the medium range.
The options are few on this type of course. About the only thing to vary is speed or distance (or both). I wanted to keep it in the 6-mile range... that's felt about right with the weather conditions. I started considering the options, looked at the calendar again, and realized it is time to begin doing speed work. Hence tonight's workout heralds the beginning of a new phase in the season.
Notice we did a long interval (1 mile) with rest? That rest roughly coincided with the hard portion. This is how it starts - long effort, longish rest interval. We will be shortening the distance, raising the speed, and shortening the rest soon. Ultimately my goal would be to have 6-8 x 800s at race pace.
Tonight was important because not only to we have to break into the process a bit gently at first, we also have to learn what paces feel like. I broke it roughly into two groups, one at 7-minute pace, the other at 8-minute, and I think you mostly landed on that. As it gets shorter and faster, it will require a great deal of concentration to stay on pace. It will also teach you what those paces feel like so you have a better chance of nailing them in a race.
If you pay attention to your form and breathing you should soon be able to guess your pace to within 10 seconds at any given time. This ability will vary a little depending on the weather, but it's fairly constant otherwise. If you know where your red line is (the point you blow up), then you should be able to pick a race pace that will keep you just under it, which should give you your optimum race pace.
Tomorrow will be an easy day. We will run Milwaukee at 4, just like we have all week. We'll be talking quite a bit about the race on Saturday. See you there!
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