TRAINING THROUGH

I mentioned in my last post that my first hard workout for TCM fits in nicely with a 30K. Actually it probably would have fit in better with a half marathon, but I wasn't going to pay $95 for the new half marathon in town. Instead I headed to White Bear Lake and paid only $34. That way I can tell my wife I saved $61 dollars.

The workout was supposed to be;
2 mile warmup
6 miles at MP
1 mile at tempo
5 miles at MP
1 mile tempo
1 mile MP
2 mile cooldown

It turned out being;
.4 mile warmup before the start
3 mile warmup
6 miles at MP
1 mile at tempo
8.6 miles at MP

The reasons for the slight alterations were, 1) I wanted a longer warmup, 2) 1 mile at tempo pace is a bitch after 6 miles at MP - actually the tempo mile isn't that bad, it's the moving back to MP without any rest that's a bitch. So the thought of throwing in another tempo mile after 5 more miles at MP (and still being nearly 4 miles from home) didn't sound appealing, and 3) with about 5 miles to go I was in 16th place and could see a bunch of runners in front of me, so I thought I'd just maintain MP and reel in as many as possible. I ended up catching 5 people and finishing 11th.

Besides getting in a solid effort, I wanted to learn a few things during this race that will help me with the rest of my workouts leading up to TCM. One of the reasons I bought the Garmin is that I'm hoping it will help to motivate me to run more/better workouts. I have no problem getting out the door and getting in my miles, however, I often find it hard to pick up the pace. It's like I'm the king of LSD base-building mileage. That's great, but I need to add some MP and tempo workouts into the mix. So for the 30K I wore my Garmin and even dusted off my HRM.

I tried to keep my HR at 175 during the MP section and 180 during the tempo. I think I did a pretty good job. When I saw 177-178 I tried to remind myself of what Daniels says about working the least to get the maximum benefits - basically it means if 175 is optimal for what I'm trying to accomplish, why run at any higher of a HR. Of course, that's assuming that you know 175 is optimal. This has always been my problem with HRM training.

Anyway, I now have a benchmark for the rest of my workouts.

Thanks to Ryan for directions on how to post my data;



During the race a couple of spectators cheered for me and then one said she loved my alibis article which was just published in the last week or two. That's kind of ironic because in the article I talk about "training through" races and using them as workouts and that's exactly what I was doing. Anyway, that was cool to hear.

I ended the week with 74 miles and the month ended up being my highest May ever with 302 miles on 30 days.

Quote of the day;

"A great alternative, if you can avoid the temptation of racing all out, is to enter a race or two of anywhere between half marathon and 20 miles, and commit to running the race at marathon pace." - Chris Lundstrom, in the July/August
issue of Running Times