Monday, August 10, 2009

Recent Goings-On

Chugging along on the training, but throwing in some fun stuff along the way...
  • Last Wednesday, did a 10K on the track as part of the Oregon Road Runners Club "Dual Duel" meet: 41:03, just two seconds off my PR.
  • 5K at the Crawfish Crawl in Tualatin on Saturday: A new PR of 19:19.4! Miles were 6:08, 6:17, 6:21 and then :33 for the final tenth or so. Second in the M45-49 age group out of 25, 27/413 overall.
  • Great 20-mile workout yesterday. Despite some challenging conditions (nearly 80 with high humidity), I covered 20.07 miles in 2:29, a 7:27 pace. Beginning to think it's actually possible to run Berlin in 7:20/mile or faster. (Of course, just because it's possible doesn't mean it will happen. Still got to do it on Race Day.)
  • Right calf fine for the shorter stuff, but begins to tighten up around 12 miles. Trigger Point Performance massage seems to help a ton, so I'll keep doing that and hope that my three-week taper leaves it in good shape for the race.

3 comments:

  1. Nice job on the race times! You and I have very similar running abilities, at all distances it seems.

    Question: Did you try to run the first mile of the 5k faster than the others, or is that just how it happened? I did the same thing in a recent one, only it was even faster and my later miles were much slower. I don't really know anything about 5k strategy, but figured this could not be optimal.

    Nice job on the 20 too. I'm just getting to that phase (the increasingly fast 20's) in the FIRST training.

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  2. Thanks, No Meat, it's always great to race, I really love it.... On pacing: I was clueless going out! In fact, I remember thinking, a minute or so after the race got under way, "Is this the right pace? Am I going to fast? Or should it hurt more? Or am I going to die in two miles?" All that stuff. It was all very much by feel. My vague thought (strategy would be too grandiose a term) had been to push things pretty hard going out. I figured with a 5K, there's not quite the degree of risk in doing that compared to 10Ks and up. Once I hit the first mile I knew I was probably going close to as fast as was prudent. I knew the real struggle would be from 1 mile to 2.75, and there I just tried to settle into a groove and maintain without too much pain, with the idea being that I would try to surge the last quarter mile. But I kind of got stuck behind someone (the course was an out-and-back on a narrow bike path and walkers were still coming toward us) so that didn't quite happen. Probably didn't cost me too much time, though. I was pretty close to red-lining it already.

    Here's some interesting food for thought, an article from Runner's World that suggests going out harder than you're inclined to might be the best strategy: http://bit.ly/s9foM. Meanwhile, I'm going to get Pfitzinger's & Douglas' "Road Racing for Serious Runners," which I hear has lots of great insights on this kind of strategy....

    Man, those 20s are tough. I'm experiencing a good dose of DOMS today (just shy of 48 hours after the run). I think I should have worn my Gel-Cumulus instead of the Hyper Speeds (racing flats) since I ended up running all on hard surfaces. Beat me up pretty good. Also, I was supposed to run 7:45 and ended up doing 7:27, so maybe that was a factor, too.

    Look forward to hearing about your 20s and race experiences. It's cool to see how someone of similar speed is tackling this stuff!

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  3. Excellent job on the 20-miler. 7:27/m is not too shabby at all!

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