Thursday, July 20, 2006

VICIOUS CYCLE

Tuesday night I met my training group for what would be my first (semi-hard) workout in over 2 months – or what felt like forever. After a 2 mile warm-up, we ran 25 minutes of the Twin Cities Marathon hill – at least the hardest part from the Lake Street Bridge to the U of St. Thomas.

Prior to doing the hills someone said they were able to get in 2 reps the previous week. So I started the workout thinking we were going to do 2 hill repeats. As I crest the hill of the 2nd rep, I see that only 16 minutes have passed. Shit. Now I have to go from thinking I’m done with the hills to turning around and doing another rep. Apparently they did a slightly different hill last week.

Oh well…I felt good on the hills. I think that was partially due to being fresh – as in not having a lot of weekly miles on my legs. And partially due to taking more of a hard/easy approach. Prior to hill workouts in the winter, I’d still get in 10-12 miles the day before. This week I just ran an easy 6 miles the day before.

After the hills we headed to the track for “mile” repeats. I ran 3 and was fairly consistent; 6:06, 6:07, 6:08 – consistently slowing down, I guess. I was pretty controlled, so there’s hope for me yet.

This training group finally has a runner that can kick Jenna’s ass. The x-c champion from the local D3 conference has joined the group. He’s also doing tris now, so hopefully that won’t stunt his sub-26 minute 8K speed. And maybe some of that will rub off on me.

Yes the weather has turned pretty nice here lately, so what have I done. I’ve hopped on the treadmill. Actually, that’s mainly due to the Tour de France. I stayed up passed 10 after Tuesday’s workout and there was no way I was waking up at 5. So last night I jumped on the mill for a very easy 5 miles while watching the tour. Again, it lasted past 10, so I decided to run tonight’s harder effort on the mill too – while watching the TDF. It’s a vicious cycle.

Speaking of the tour, yesterday I was purposely avoiding any results because they’re in the mountains now and I knew it’d be more fun to watch if I didn’t know the outcome. Well, I went to the letsrun.com message board at lunch and the first thread I saw said, “Floyd Landis is now 9:25 down on the leaders today!” Thanks a lot for posting that, asswipe!

So today I’m blogging rather than surfing message boards.

Quote of the day;
“During the hard training phase never be afraid to take a day off. If your legs are feeling unduly stiff and sroe, rest; if you are at all sluggish, rest; in fact, if in doubt, rest.” – Bruce Fordyce

4 comments:

  1. Yeah.....there's always some jackass out there that will let the cat out of the bag on the TDF. I go to a site called BikeJournal and you will get extremely chastised for putting any information like that in the title of a thread on the forum.

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  2. Feels like we finally got some of your cooler weather out East.

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  3. We have no hills in chicago so I'm in awe.
    by the way love the quote - rest is good.

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  4. Lance, I don't care if people post about the stage, just make it clear in the subject line that the thread is going to be about that day's stage.

    Mark, feel free to send that back - soon.

    Nicole, these aren't huge hills, but they do the trick. Since I'm running Chicago, it's nice to hear you guys don't have any hills.

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