Tempo

I got in a 4 mile tempo in 21:56. It was completely effort based, I didnt check my watch until after I finished. I started with 5:46 and finished with a 5:08, so I at least gradually squeezed it down.

I am happy with the effort. I would obviously have loved to run it faster but the plan for the week is just to hit peak mileage and put a good effort in at the rockville twilight race on saturday night.

Tomorrow will hopefully serve as a recovery day with two easy runs planned. Thursday medium with two run as well. Friday easy, Saturday race, Sunday long.

Workout/Long Run

I did my first combo workout long run today. I didnt get in as much mileage I had planned but I am happy with how the workout turned out.
After a 2 mile warmup, I did 4x1 mile with one minute recovery. The mile times were: 5:18, 5:23, 5:17, 5:25. The 1st and 3rd miles had a slight downhill for the first half mile, where the 2nd and 4th had a slight uphill the last half mile.
I followed this with 33 minutes easy. I had originally hoped to get in 45 minutes but the heat and my muscles would not allow it.
I changed back into my racing flats and somehow managed to get through 3 miles in 16:18.
Given the workout I can say that I am in better shape than I was last week and thats all that I really hope to accomplish as the weeks go by.

Unplanned Tempo

AM - Easy 4

PM - I had originally attempted to do a tempo tomorrow afternoon but I ended up doing one tonight. It happened tonight simply because I was pissed at how slow I was going on my medium 9 miler. I came through 4 miles in low 27s, and after that I just gradually picked it up until I hit 4.5 to 5.5 in 5:30. At that point I realized it was too late to shut it down so I just went with it and I ended up doing 4 miles in 21:33.
The positives for the workout was that I ran it 10 seconds faster than 3 weeks ago, and this time I did it in trainers as opposed to racing flats. My goal is to get the 4 mile tempo down under 20 minutes a few months from now...we will see how that goes.


Clinton and Obama...how will they perform when the pressure is on?
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0507/4155.html

The Week Plan (5/21-5/27)

Ive decided that Im going to take things no more than a week at a time because I have no long my groin will hold. With that being said, here is the plan for next week:

Mon: 5-7 miles easy
Tues: 5-6 x 1 mile w/ 1 min recovery(a.m.)/ 5 miles easy(p.m.)
Wed: 7 miles easy (a.m.)/ 5 miles easy (p.m.)
Thurs: 8-10 miles easy
Friday: 8-10 miles medium
Saturday: 5 miles easy
Sunday: 13-15 miles easy/medium

Weekly Mileage: 66-75

The goal for the week is to get in some good base and keep building up to 85 miles. I also want to get a little bit of tempo work in, hence the 5-6 x mile with 1 minute recovery( jack daniels workout). The goal is for it to be a medium effort, starting in the mid-5:20s and picking up the pace throughout.

If anybody wants to get in on any of the runs, let me know.

Tempo 5/9

I decided that I would get in a 4 mile tempo this morning and it went fairly well. I ended up hitting 21:41 for the four miles with splits of 5:26, 5:28, 5:25, 5:22. I ran it completely based on how I felt without looking at my watch until I finished. I stayed fairly strong the entire time and didnt really feel to beat until the last half mile. The last half mile was kind of rough because it was straight shot so you could see the entire straight, and it was also a gradual incline which added to the difficulty.

In the grand scheme of things, I still have 17 weeks until the half marathon and since it takes me awhile to get rolling, today was not really any indication of whats to come. I plan to do this workout every few weeks as a benchmark workout, with the goal of getting down closer and closer to 20 minutes for the 4.

With warmup and cooldown, I got in a total of 8 for the morning. Im hoping to get in a second run later on and possibly a nap before that. Im fairly excited at the moment because I busted out the crock pot to throw together a little chili. This is my first time making chili, so it will be interesting to see how it turns out.

Tempo 5/3

I had no workouts planned for the week, but I ended up getting a tempo in today. This was a textbook effort based tempo rather than a tempo based on trying to hit a certain time which was really nice. I felt like I was flying without putting any real effort in at all.

The best part about the workout is that I have no idea how fast or how far I made it; I just stopped when I got the urge to stop. So Im anticipating that there will be no more workout until next week when I will try and throw down a 20 minute tempo at a quick pace...and this unfortunately will not be quite as effort based as todays was.

The only bad thing about today was that groin hurt on my cooldown, but at least I got in another run before my groin completely falls apart. I think I ended up hitting over 9 miles for the day in little over 58 minutes.