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

4 comments:

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

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

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  4. 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.

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