Sunday, March 30, 2008

Filling in the Holes...

The week ended up decent enough. Went to UBC on Sunday Morning and got there right as the young’uns were heading out. I had to pick it up as I was a few mins behind, but they tend to take it pretty mellow at first, but I also don’t know the trails that well. Got lucky and caught them after about 15 mins. Ran with a group of guys til about an hour when I had to take a pit stop and lost the group. I ended up running for another 40mins by myself until I bumped into Jizzy. Good thing too as he said he had been running slow and I needed someone at that time. Ended up at 3hrs of varying paces, but felt tight from Sat’s session. Ended up at high 180 kms for the week
Recovered well from Sat and Sun as my AM run felt great and my PM run was one of those ‘I can’t run any slower’ no matter how hard I tried. It was a planned 55 mins easy but turned into a quick 56. At least it felt easy
Tues was another story. Had a lousy sleep (bloody dog decided she wanted to get up at 4ish and 5ish) and felt lousy during the day, but the main problem was this super chilli Jules made. Tasted great but having it for dinner on Mon and lunch on Tues caused me a few….errrr…ummmm….stomach problems, if you know what I mean. I thought I was going to throw up on the warm up, and a supposed great workout for me right now (6 x 1600m) turned into me timing the guys who did 5-6 x 1600m. Jizzy, did 6 around 4:40 lowish avg, Swedish guy Henrik looked real good as avg’d about the same but for 5 and Cardogg jumped in and out but it was the first time he’s done anything of a decent speed.
Wed was the lost day. My stomach was till bugging me on Wed AM so I decided to take the morning off ( a bit of a down week anyways). Decided to do one of the classic 10km sessions of 10 x 3mins of 1min rest up at the outer concrete trails around Mundy Park. Not bad as it felt hard, but controlled, and I ended up almost hitting the same spot each time (I think I actually covered more ground the last 3-4). A few more easy days and then the Foolsrun ½ marathon on Sunday. …hmmmmm……

The week that was...

Had a decent 'tempo fartlek' on Saturday. It's a session of approx 5 x 2km ( I do it at Burnaby Lake where they have 'posts' that are a bit longer than 1km and on gravel trails) at or just below tempo pace with 1 km about 25-30 sec slower. But on this day I hit the splits I wanted on the hard parts, but my slow parts were not much slower (about 12sec at the best and 20sec at the worst). Since I kept up the harder parts at the required HR, effort and most improtantly pace it turned into a very steady session. Shows my aerobic fitness is very good as my HR was lower than many other past sessions yet I ran faster.
PM was a 'slow as' 37 min run.

It's a workout that has evolved over the years. A few years back I was bored one day and wanted to get into longer tempo runs. Since very few people actually seem to do tempo style runs I always ended up doing them on my own. Since I still have the mindset of a miler I tend to get bored easily in longer sessions. I really enjoy fartlek style runs (a topic dear to my heart) and over time took a traditional 2 x 20mins and turned into a staple of my workout sessions. Also great because anyone can hop in and do as many sets as they can/want based upon their fitness. Good thing was that a few years back I found this exact workout (except the hard parts were at marathon pace)in top British marathoner Richard Nerukar's training book. Like I say there is really nothing new these days even if you think it is...

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Where to Begin...

It may have taken a while, but finally I put something of substance on here (I've had the blog address for at least 6 months). But why? In all honesty I am not 100% sure. My wife said it would be a good idea, I enjoy following a handful of blogs, but in the end I figured like the 'blogs' I sometimes follow, always follow or stumble on to that somewhere some place someone might actually enjoy my 'ramblings'. (Actually I really just wanted to be cool like Reid Coolsaet, but that's another story...)

I'll try to post my training, share some training thoughts of someone who has experimented with many a running concept (mostly successfully) and throw out the odd story/current thoughts.

One thing is for sure... You'll notice I have an errrr... unique typing/writing style (trust me I don't write report cards like this). Let me know if there's something you'd like to hear about.... then again I just hope you find this entertaining. I'll make sure to watch my typos and try not to go off on any tangents. Yah! Good luck...