I've made a few adjustments in the past few weeks with my training and I believe that I am starting to feel the benefits. I'm finishing workouts feeling strong and in control. It hasn't paid off in any races yet, but I believe I need to simply have patience and the improvements in racing will come. My races haven't been necessarily bad, but I guess like all competitive athletes, we just want more from ourselves.
October has been a pretty good month of training thus far. I've been able to train consistently with some of the guys from WCAP in speed workouts such as Robert, Augustus and John. In addition to training with these great athletes, I've been able to do endurance workouts and progression runs with some athletes from the American Distance Project, including Tommy and Chris.
Although training started picking back up from after my calf strain in August, I can definitely tell that I had lost a step or two in my stride. Although September and October thus far have been two great months of training, both races I've done in these months have not gone as I had planned. The half marathon in Philly was a pretty big disappoint although it was my 2nd fastest half marathon I've ever run. My goal heading into the race was to improve upon my 1:05:32 in which I had run in Seattle and maintain 4:57 per mile pace for a sub-1:05. I started falling off pace as early as 8 miles and although I went through 10 miles in a PR of 49:56, I was only able to manage 5:06 pace in the last 8 kilometers. I'm hoping that the increase in long runs of 16-24 miles will help build the strength that I am lacking for late in these races. Regardless, I'm happy with the improvement I've made in 2011 in the half marathon:
2011 Half Marathons:
January, US Half Marathon Championships: 1:09:01
April, Half Marathon in Rotterdam: 1:07:53
June, Seattle RnR Half Marathon: 1:05:32
September, Philly RnR Half Marathon: 1:06:09
It was basically the same story, different distance in the Army 10 Miler. Thankfully, we were still able to win the team title for the 2nd straight year against the Brazilians. I felt strong at 8k 24:35, but shortly after I went through the 10k in 30:46, I started to fall off pace. I don't know if I start to get lazy towards the latter half of a race or if I'm just putting that type of work in during practice. Hopefully the training I'm doing now will help fix this issue for the coming races in November and December.
I'm currently training for the Santa Barbara International Half Marathon on November 12th. I plan on going into that race with relatively high mileage the week before so when I go into the California International Marathon on December 4th with fresh legs, I'll feel that much better.
------------------------------------------------------------------
October 2011
(Week before the Army 10-miler)
10/2: 14 mile recovery run with Robert and Augustus (1:37:08)
10/3: 12 miles easy + 5 x 100m strides
10/4: 3 1/2 mile warm up, 8 x 800m repeats (2:22 - 2:26), 2 mile cool down
PM: 5 1/2 miles easy in the evening (40:12)
10/5: 11.5 miles easy in 1:22:08
10/6: 8.5 miles easy in 1:02:41 on the Monument Valley Trail
10/7: Flew into Washington D.C. for the Army 10 Miler
PM: 6 miles easy with Robert, Augustus and John in 45:12
10/8: Pre race-day jog - 5 miles easy with the All-Army Team in Washington D.C. + 5 x 15 second striders
72 miles for the week
------------------------------------------------------------------
10/9: Army 10 Miler in 50:20 (14th place overall) + 3 mile w/u and 3 mile c/d
10/10: AUSA Conference - Took the day off
10/11: Flew back to Colorado Springs in the morning
PM: 14 miles in 1:30:01 on the monument valley trail
10/12: 16.2 mile endurance run (1:45:39)
PM: 7 miles easy in evening
10/13: 2.5 mile warm up, 8 mile progression run with Augustus (5:52, 5:42, 5:31, 5:28, 5:27, 5:12, 5:13, 5:22 - averaged 5:28) 2.5 mile cool down
PM: 5 1/2 miles in the evening easy
10/14: Ran 13.3 miles with Christie on a hilly course around our apartment up by Blodget Peak
10/15: Ran 14.6 miles easy on the monument valley trail in 1:34:45
100 miles for the week
No comments:
Post a Comment