FINAL BORE

I woke up at 5 this morning and was still a little tired. I remembered that the NCAA men’s championship game was on TV tonight, so I reset my watch for 6 and went back to sleep. Why ‘do now’ what you can put off till later?

I ended up running 10 miles on the treadmill while watching Florida pound UCLA. I didn’t really care who won, but I kind of like Billy Donavon, so I was happy. After a great tournament, the Final Four turned into the Final Bore with 3 blowouts. Still, I couldn’t stop watching Florida, even though the game was basically over.

After running, I lifted a few weights and did some crunches. Call me crazy, but I almost see a little six-pack forming. Just like anything else, it’s nice to get a little positive feedback. It actually makes me want to workout a little more and do a better job of cutting out junk food.

Now that the base-phase is behind me and I’m almost finished with hills, I’ve been thinking ahead to the sharpening/coordination phase. Daws does a good job of explaining the progression of workouts;

A fair amount of volume, relatively slow with short rests (i.e. 20 x 400 @ 10k pace with 100 jog)

Less volume, faster speeds with more rest (i.e. 1k repeats @ 3-5K pace followed by jogging until HR drops to 100)

Even less volume, faster speeds with less rest

Fast with very little resting (i.e. stride/float 50s or 100s)

However, how to mix them into a schedule and for how long is a little confusing. I thought I’d look at Lydiard’s Running to the Top as well as some Lydiard info that Mike sent me. That just added to the confusion. The workouts even varied from one Lydiard article to another. And we wonder why people think his information is confusing.

Needless to say, a little more research is needed as I head towards my final 9 weeks. I think I have my race schedule nailed down. Evan and I discussed it during our last long run. I’m going to race a 20k this Saturday and a 10k on the 29th. May 13th (half) and 27th (30K) I’ll run at marathon pace. The week before Grandma’s I may race a 5k-8k, depending on how my training is progressing.

Quote of the day:
“Look, last year, you ran the best race of your career. Everything went right and you performed at your very best. Now, if you know why that happened and you put your training plan together properly to reproduce that peak performance again on the day of the first race you want to win this season, then I would say you know something about training. Until you can do that, you don't know a damn thing about it. You are just a good athlete who, one day, without realizing why it is happening, will run a good race.” Arthur Lydiard