The week that was....

..it was an interesting week. I probably didn't do some things I should not have, but in the end I learned a lot. this week was a down week, and i really wanted to focus on making my weekdays easy. We've started our school track practices in earnest, which is great but it can be a constraint on time.

The highlight of the week was an interesting one. and One I hope works. I did a 3 x 3km tempo session with Ryan on Saturday, and felt really tight. Even Dick made a sarcastic comment on my lack of upper body movement. It was a strange workout as I didn't feel beat up in any way, but I felt like I was beat up while I was doing the workout. The good part was in chatting with the guys about the Stanford races. I didn't know that the races were on Flotrack and I sat down when I got home and watched Steve and Dickie's race.


The thing about it is that I took little (no offence) from their races, but I took a ton from watching soIeone who never even finished the race. A few years ago i went to world cross with Kurt Benninger. People kept on saying how he ran very similar to me. I had forgotten about that time, until I saw Kurt take the lead (apparently he had shoelace come untied and ended up dropping out with less than a mile to go). As I watched Kurt I studied his stride and saw all the things I had somehow forgotten to do in my own running stride.

In my attempts to become more efficient in road racing I have forgotten what made my stride so good for the shorter distances, and that was simply getting up on my toes and staying there as long as I could. I saw the slightly loping and bouncy stride of Kurt and remembered when I ran the same way as opposed to this so called marathon stride I've been trying to perfect. I remembered all the times I felt lousy in a race, got back up on my toes and all of a sudden was rolling again. In other words 'just run dumby'. The result has been 3 days of great and absolutely rolling runs on my toes, with my hips out forward . back slightly pulled back and more power and fluidity than I've felt in a long time. Hopefully this isn't a short term solution.

Mon: off
Tues:1600-1200-800-400 alternating hard and medium 200s
Wed: 70mins
Thurs: 75mins
Friday: 68mins
Saturday: 3 x 3km (I think I was 9:38, 9:29 and 9:28)
PM 50mins
Sunday: 67 mins PM 42 mins