Some Things
Even though I have not posted any information lately, training is going forward at full pace. (I might use that as one of the reasons I did not post during Week 5.) One significant point from last week: on Wednesday, July 23, I ran my fastest 5k in the past 27 years, covering the 3.1 miles in 19:19.
As Tommie notes, our assignment today was to our "best" 5k, rest for half of the time it took to complete the 5k, and then run a second 5k! This is the first of three times that this workout will come up on our training schedule, and I was wondering from the start exactly what it would feel like.we ran our first 5k in under 20 minutes (at 19:58) and then set out, after ten minutes of rest, on our second 5k. I found out right away what this “Speed Work, Speed Work” was going to improve for me: leg strength. I felt like I was lugging a couple of tree stumps along Foothill Boulevard for the first mile of the second 5k. I believe this is where Tommie and I lost most of our 30 seconds on the second run, with miles 2, 3, and 3.1 about as fast as they were the first time through. Second 5k for me: 20:25, which might not have happened without Tommie right there the whole way. Funny note from the run: Tommie’s watch did not start at 00:00:00 on the first run, so he did not know right away that it was his fastest 5k ever. His fatigue in completing the run probably had him baffled while he was thinking he took over 23 minutes. It was nice to see his reaction when he found out he knocked almost a half minute off of his PR time from last week. The Juggernaut rocks!
Jeff, Ted, Trish, and I met at the Middle School for the 2-3-1 run that Jeff describes. I ran the 3-mile "Short Tempo" part in a detour-adjusted 20:45, which is a pace of 6:55 per mile and right on my target.
The detour was caused by my not wearing contact lenses for this run. Boy-o-boy, those street signs can be tough to read! Good thing I had Trish so close by to catch my missed turns.
Yesterday, Day 5, was an "Off" day, and then today a group of almost a dozen of us met at the Rose Bowl to train. We were to run 5 km, which is one 3.1-mile lap around the facility (including part of the Brookside Golf Course) at our choice of paces: either our Marathon Paces (7:37 per mile for me) or we could each try to set a personal record (PR) at the distance.
I did not set a PR at the distance, but I did run the loop in 20:27, which is a pace of 6:36 per mile. The toughest part was the first three-quarters of a mile, which was a slight uphill stretch fresh out of the blocks. That is a rude way to wake up at 7:00am.
Amy and I both wrapped up our training for the day by joining the group at the Academy for the CrossFit total. That is where I got to PR... in Back Squat and Shoulder Press.
I was part of the Jeff-Jim-Ted-Tommie group running sprints at the middle school this morning and had a fun time with everyone, including the part where we had to run 200m... twelve times. My times (all in seconds) were as follows:
Each one-minute rest between sprints went by faster than the one before; I hope it was a local phenomenon and that we did not warp the fabric of space-time for everyone. We really would have preferred for the one minute rest sections to have been the same every time.
The fastest 200m of this morning's session went to Ted, who flew through his last half lap of the track in 33 seconds!
Rest day tomorrow: I hope it lasts for a "normal" 24 hours.
I made a rare visit to the Team 1700 workout this afternoon, and I have one thing to say about that: It is hot when the sun is out! I have to get back together with my heliophobic Team 0600 friends soon. We did the posted Workout of the Day, which was 5-5-5-5-5 deadlifts. My loads for the sets of five were as follows:
Now I am off to care for my sore piriformis ... and prepare for a dozen 200m sprints in the morning.
Monday was the official "Off" day, and today we jumped back in with five miles of running at a mid-tempo pace. For me, that is 7:10 per mile, which should have brought me to the five-mile point at 35:50. I got to it in 34:36, which puts me at just over 6:55 per mile.
For the first quarter mile, I had doubts that I would be able to keep pace, but as I approached the half-mile point the rhythm felt more maintainable. I did not experience any burning like what I felt on Week 2, Day 5 at the 3.5-mile point. Maybe this is the payoff of training, or it could be fresh legs after yesterday's rest day.
If I keep running faster than my prescribed pace for two more weeks, I will consider dropping my target marathon time from 3:20:00 to 3:15:00. But I agree with juggernaut's plan not to switch too soon.
Today was supposed to be a CrossFit/Bootcamp training day, but I spent most of it recovering from Saturday's Adventure Race. If I had woken up early enough, I could have joined a group digging a trench at Ryan's house.
Oh well.
I joined Ryan, Kate, and Lauren as part of TCA #2 – Chaos Theory for the 6th Annual Scout Adventure Challenge in the Santa Monica Mountains today.
The marathon training schedule called for an 8-mile run at "Marathon Pace + 45 Seconds", but we instead completed, by my estimate, about twelve miles of hiking and running (with food and water on our backs) and over fifteen miles of mountain biking on a variety of roads and trails.
Highlights:
I confess that leading up to the event I had some ambivalence about participating. Once the event got rolling though, I was immediately happy that I got to play.
Fridays at Team CrossFit Academy are turing into Happy Hour (or Pick-Your-Poison) days. When the line this morning was too long for buying an iPhone, I joined the 9:00am crew and picked "Christine", which is three rounds of the following:
My time: 10:59.
Saturday's workout is suppose to be an 8-mile run at 8:22 per mile. Instead of that run, however, I will join Ryan, Kate, and Lauren for the Scout Adventure Race. [Insert appropriate smack-talk here against the other teams.]
"Super Helen". That is what many of us are calling this morning's 6:00am CrossFit workout. Complete the following (for time, of course):
Finished in 22 minutes plus change. Half of us did the workout in the order listed, and the other half started at the bottom and worked up (which is the order in which Helen is usually done). The standard Helen workout is demonstrated in this wmv video and in this mov video (67MB apiece) from CrossFit's "exercises" web page.
We started this week with Speed Training, and I met a large group at the middle school for 400m repeats (ten of them) on the track. With this being only the third speed session, and only the start of the third week of training, the rate at which improvement comes amazes me. Simply to compare the splits listed below to those from two weeks ago, does not tell the whole story. Yes, today's times are about one or two seconds faster than the earlier one, but the fun part is that I am not nearly as wiped out now even though they were faster and there were ten of them this week (as opposed to eight).
So here are the results (targeted maximum per lap was 1:30):
The last one was nowhere near Tommie's 1:13!
My mini-brag for today: P.R. in Clean & Jerk... 175 lbs.
…time now for that “Rest Day” I mentioned in my previous post.
Labels: Crossfit
I had no problem adding a minute over yesterday's pace to each mile of today's run. Murry put together a scenic 6-mile route through Sierra Madre and brought enough maps of it that all different paces made it through without a single wrong turn. Eric offered an alternative left-turn-only route to the NASCAR fans in the group, and only one of them went astray.
My target was 8:22 per mile, which should have brought me back to Kersting Court in 50:12. One part of the trip threw a wrench into the timing for me and everone else, however: in the middle of the fifth mile, there is a long climb up Michillinda Avenue. Nearly all of us anticipated the drop-off in pace that Michillinda would force upon us, so we sped up in the mile before the climb. But none of us fell significantly off of our "Marathon +45" targets on that rise, so we all completed the six miles below our hoped-for times. My finish: 49:46 (8:18 per mile).
Next up: Rest! (Sunday is an "Off" day.) Back to the track for 400m repeats (ten of them) on Monday.
I saved a half gallon of gas and got an extra hour of sleep by staying in Pasadena for my five-mile mid-tempo run this morning (rather than meeting the 6:00am group at the Middle School).
Following a Pasadena route (why doesn’t it let me print for free?!!), I set out to maintain a 7:10 per-mile pace, which should have had me finishing at the 35:50 mark. There are some elevation changes in the route, but despite these, I was able to hold the 7:10 pace pretty closely both on the uphill portions and on the level parts. On top of that, I allowed myself to open up a little on the downhill stretches, which brought my finish time down to 34:07.
Notes from the run:
Congratulations to all of the CrossFit/Bootcamp racers today in the Bleksmith 5K!
On schedule for Saturday: A 6-mile group run from Kersting Court at 8:22 per mile. It will be interesting to add more than a minute over today's pace to each mile of the run.
Days 3 and 7 this week are "Off" days, and this "3-On / 1-Off" schedule seems to suit me. I feel reasonably recovered after yesterday's Off time.
This morning at the Academy, we had about fifteen people for the 6:00am class, and Eric designed the workout in "Happy Hour" or "Pick Your Poison" style in which each of us chose one of 20 Standard workouts. The poison I chose was the naughty one named Nancy: Five reps for time of {Run 400m / 95-lb overhead squat X 15}.
I had never done this one before, and I had been looking for an opportunity to try it out. So when Eric announce the morning’s format, I made a mental beeline for Nancy.
Result: 17 minutes plus change. (I think it was 17:16, but it was all I could do to write it down; once I had it on the board, I tasked those brain cells to life-support duties.) I think each of the five rounds finished between 3:30 and 3:45 – much less of a late-round drop-off than I feared. Was this related to the speed work we have been doing on the track? Perhaps.
For a video of two guys completing Nancy much faster than I did, see either WMV format or MOV format. But be warned: each of those videos is over 50MB.
Well, there they were waiting for us: nasty 800m repeats – six of them, with two minutes of recovery time between runs. My target time was 3:03 for each of them, and I kept all of my runs below that, but I know I did not have many (any?) more of them left in me when I finished.
The first three went pretty well, but after that third one, I did not feel nearly as recovered at the "Go" signal as I did following the first two. Coming in to finish the fourth one, I knew Number 5 was going to be the one most likely to fall behind pace – even more likely than Number 6, as I knew I did not have to leave anything in the tank after the final one. So this is what I remember writing down for my times:
Tomorrow is a much-needed day off. The next trip to the track will come on Monday: Ten runs of 400m each. Maybe I will keep my anxiety level down until Saturday or Sunday.
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