Catching Up

I haven't had the chance to write since I created this thing so I have three days worth of workouts to catch up on.

Thursday night was scheduled to be an interval workout so I headed over to the middle school track and decided I was going to run 1600 meters as fast as I could. I did a mile warm up and a mile worth of strides. It was a cool and windy 57 degrees with the wind out of the West at 22 mph and gusting to 28. The humidity was 82%. I keep track of all that stuff because I like to see how my heart rate responds to temp and relative humidity.

I haven't done much speedwork to speak of this year and I wanted to see where my fitness level was after running a less than stellar half marathon(1:44:45) and a 5k(20:23) on a hilly course in less than ideal conditions: rainy and cold. Two weeks before my half I had run a 3200 meter time trial in 12:25, which is 4 seconds slower than my post-married life personal best of 12:21(Parade Run '06), and I felt that I had a decent chance to run my 1600 in the 5:45 range.

As I started my time trial I realized that I forgot to change my max heart rate on my watch and was dinging the alarm before I even hit the 200 m. mark. I spent about 50 meters getting the thing to shut up and passed through the 400 in 1:28.32. I made a conscious effort to get back on my hoped for 85 second/lap pace and burned the second lap in 1:25.01 passing through 800 in 2:53.33. I don't know about you but in high school I always had a hard time maintaining pace on the third lap of my 1600 races so I forced myself to surge hard on the back-stretch of my third lap and passed 1200 in 4:20.32 with a lap time of 1:26.99. I knuckled down and pushed myself through a little O2 debt and finished in 5:46.01 with a final lap of 1:25.69. I ran my second half in negative splits: 2:52.68 Not bad for negligible speedwork.

I cooled off with 13 and a half minutes of running around the middle school playing fields and drove home for an ice bath and dinner with my family.

On a side note: my HR at each 400 m. split was 177, 187, 189 and 190. Based on the fact that my max HR is 203 and that I can never seem to push myself hard enough to get that high in practice, I predict that I am capable of running a 5:25 mile in July at the Sizzling Mile as long as I stay healthy and get in some quality interval practices.

Friday evening's run was an easy 5 mile jaunt through the streets of Chatham. I set my HR monitor for a peak of 79%(170 bpm) and focused on running relaxed and not pushing the pace. I run pretty slow on my easy days and generally try to keep my pace between 8:30 - 9:00. I ran my five miles in 42:09 with mile splits of 8:45, 8:43, 8:27, 8:32 and 7:42. You're probably wondering where the 7:42 mile came from, let me tell you. During my last mile I was setting my watch to countdown a minute and was counting my stride rate. Jack Daniels, the coach, not the whiskey, says to try to keep your stride rate at about 180 per minute. I was running about 165 on average and was surging during my one minute intervals. I was about 3 blocks away from finishing my run when a truck with some testosterone overdosed high school boys drove by and started yelling at me. I hate getting heckled especially since I don't yell at them while they're in football, track or baseball practice. I finished my last three blocks a little stronger than I would have at other times and that is why I ran a 7:42 mile. I also think my five mile course is a little short.

The temp on Friday was 68, with a 15mph wind out of the West gusting to 23. The relative humidity was 44%. I ran 41:42 seconds of my 42:09 run within my 79% ceiling and had an average HR of 156 for the day.

Saturday was a long run day. I ran miles through the hilly part of Chatham, which really isn't that hilly. It was 57, or so, W13 with 75% humidity. It got pretty hot when you weren't running west and I'm pretty sure it was hotter than 57 when I finished my run. I was a little dehydrated and slightly sleep deprived because my little boy hasn't been sleeping well. I hit the road around 0900 which was a mistake, I should have left earlier.

I ran my 9 mile run with a 79% ceiling and finished in 1:15:32. I had splits of 8:53, 8:46, 16:40(2 miles), 8:22, 8:08(surging through "hills"), and 24:40(last 3 miles). I spent 1:01:50 in zone with an average HR of 161.

After my run I got cleaned up and took my wife and child to the mall to buy some clothes for work where I discovered that my 9 month old can drink through a straw. When we got home we ordered a pizza, watched "Smoking Aces"(which was actually reasonably stupid once you started thinking about it) and drank a few beers.

I ran a total of 28.5 miles this week and only got heckled during two of them. The other incident was during an easy 5 miler on Tuesday. It was hot so I wasn't wearing a shirt to cover my HR monitor and some junior high kids were yelling "Nice bra!!!" at me as I ran by. I may not be as lean as I used to be but I sure don't need a bra! It kinda had me wondering if my monitor strap made me look fat.