Thursday, December 21, 2006

UP-TEMPO

I don’t really have anything exciting to talk about today. I was thinking a little bit more about my excuse list and how it compares to Brent’s. I think it’s interesting that Brent, who’s relatively new to running, has a list that’s mainly made up of excuses that keep him from training, while my excuses are more about racing. I don’t have a lot of trouble getting out the door and training, but there are definitely things I can work on to race better.

I had another nice run this morning; 11 miles with 8 of them at 7:10 pace. If you want to get exact, the 2 mile splits were 14:45, 14:03, 14:26 and 14:18.

I’ve been trying to include one of these up-tempo runs each week. The last couple have been on the treadmill, between 7:00 and 7:10 pace, so it was nice to see I could reproduce the same pace while running outside – and hold it for 8 miles.

During the last 2 mile stretch, I tried to imagine racing the last 5K of a half marathon I’m running on January 27th. I tend to justify my satisfaction with my races – before I’m finished – rather than pushing all the way to the end. How's that for an excuse? So I figure if I visualize pushing the last 5K in practice, it’ll help on race day.

That’s all I’ve got. Off to bowling…

Quote of the day;

“It’s the effort that matters on the hard days.” – Steve Jones
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4 comments:

  1. Don12/21/2006 3:17 PM

    That's a pretty good pace for winter temps and clothing

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  2. brent12/21/2006 7:45 PM

    thanks for the shout-outs, i thought it was pretty interesting to compare and contrast the lists. interesting how different people use different excuses depending on their progression regarding xzy goal(s).

    on a side note, i would rather run in hot weather any day but again, this probably hightlights the fact that i don't have a whole lot of experience running LONG in hot weather (relatively speaking of course)--only the last two summers of M training; prior to that i only ran up to 40 or 45 minutes max and then called it a day.

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  3. Mike12/22/2006 12:46 AM

    Did you take any skinheads?
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zPmgZ6g_X0

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  4. Chad12/22/2006 8:04 AM

    Don, the clear paths definitely help.

    Brent, it makes me wonder if our lists are typical for how long each of us have been running.

    No Mike, they were already there.

    ReplyDelete