Andy's Running Blog

Run: 2.0 miles - Pace: 9:47/mi - Week: 2.0 miles - Year: 2.0 miles - Total: 763.69 miles

Back to basics. The problems I was having with my left leg seem to have healed up, so I thought I'd get rolling again. Right now, I don't have any particular races that I'm shooting for, though the Hospital Hill Run would be nice in June. So, with a successful run under my belt, here are my goals for 2009.

#1 - Run healthy. This is the big one. I don't want to miss more than a week due to injury at any point this year.

#2 - Set PR's in the 5K, 10K and Half. Ideally breaking 23:00, 50:00 and 2:00:00 respectively. Though I don't want that to interfere with Goal #1.

#3 - Raise more money for Harvesters. I think that I'll do some more fundraising for the KC Half, and with some extra time I might even shoot for $1000. We'll see.

Run: 10.0 miles - Pace: 10:35/mi - Week: 10.0 miles - Total: 761.69 miles

Had to move my long run to today because I was quite sore yesterday from all that faster running. First off, the splits.

Mile 1 - 10:10
Mile 2 - 10:30
Mile 3 - 10:31
Mile 4 - 10:41
Mile 5 - 10:45 -- First Half - 52:37
Mile 6 - 10:26
Mile 7 - 10:07
Mile 8 - 10:45
Mile 9 - 11:06
Mile 10 - 10:49 -- Second Half - 53:13

The heat really got to me in those last couple of miles. This 75 degree weather really sucked after running in low 50's or upper 40's. I really just wanted to stop those last two miles. My legs felt like there were going to give out.

This course really isn't as easy as I had hoped. The four miles that are on the concrete sidewalk along the four line roads sucked. Of course, they were also quite hilly, but they just sucked in general. Coming back down in mile 7 was fun, but after that I was basically done. I wasn't ready for this run and it rightly kicked my butt. With 3 weeks to the race, I'll have to try for 13 miles next week, and maybe 9-10 the following week. I'm gonna keep running on the course, and hopefully I'll get ready for that concrete. Ugh.

Run: 5.0 miles - Pace: 9:04/mi - Week: 19.43 miles - Total: 751.69 miles

Race pace for 5 miles, and I managed to stay 5 second per mile under that pace. It wasn't easy, though. It was kind of depressing to see myself 200 feet behind my electronic pacer after the first walk break. By the end, I wasn't quite to the point where I didn't fall behind with walk breaks, but I was pretty close. Hopefully, in the half, I'll find myself solidly ahead of the pacer at 6 miles, allowing me to fall behind if I happen to.

Since I can, here are the splits:

Mile 1 - 9:00
Mile 2 - 9:09
Mile 3 - 9:04
Mile 4 - 8:58
Mile 5 - 9:07

I felt better after the first mile, and didn't feel like I had to work as hard being warmed up, but that could have been the slightly slower pace. :) Actually, using the pacer kept me within 11 seconds on every mile, which is pretty awesome. Tomorrow, 10 miles at 10:30/mi pace. Eek.

Run: 3.0 miles - Pace: 9:37/mi - Week: 14.43 miles - Total: 746.68 miles

Nice little training run today. I set the pacer for a 9:45 pace and went from there. The first mile did not feel very easy, though I now know that it is the only mile that is mainly uphill for this route. After I got warmed up I settled into the pace nicely. I didn't have to stop for traffic and found the pacer to be quite nice. Blister seemed ok, it was mostly just calf soreness from yesterday. That's ok, tomorrow's a day off.

For the 5mi pace run, I think I will go with the walk breaks, though perhaps only 30-45 seconds. It'll be interesting to see what it's like pacing with this garmin feature with walk breaks. For the 10mi long run, I'm thinking about trying a 10:30 pace. The McMillan calc puts me at 9:21-10:21 for the long runs, but I know that's too fast for my current fitness level. Those last long runs before the half were at 11:00 and 10:46, so hopefully I can pull this off well. If I'm gonna be able to hit that 2 hour goal, I've got to train at faster paces. It just makes the runs suck a little more. :)

Run: 6.5 miles - Pace: 9:25/mi - Week: 11.43 miles - Total: 743.68 miles

Hard workout today. 9x400m intervals at 5K pace. Thanks to the Garmin, I was able to just do this outside. I ran a mile to a nice relatively flat area to do the 400m repeats and then got to work. It was nice that it told me when I needed to speed up or slow down, but it got on my nerves late in the workout as I had to strive harder. :)

Here are the paces per mile for the repeats, I went easy then hard:

#1 - 10:54, 7:41

#2 - 10:12, 7:30

#3 - 10:01, 7:41

#4 - 10:07, 7:44

#5 - 10:14, 7:29

#6 - 10:27, 7:33

#7 - 10:13, 7:37

#8 - 10:17, 7:41

#9 - 10:24, 7:29

What's remarkable is that those paces don't reflect how much harder the last 3 were compared to the first six. I probably shouldn't have jumped in with such a hard workout, so we'll see how I feel tomorrow. I used body glide on the toe, and it held up pretty well, though there was still some damage.

Boy, that was hard, but I love my Garmin.