This was a "mini taper" week with the key workout being the 10K "time trial" on Saturday. The objective was to get a guage of our fitness relative to a training program that is pretty much based on shooting for a 3 hour marathon (not saying I'm going to get that on my first go at 26.2). More on pace and marathon projections at the end. Here's the day by day report:
M: 4.9mi in 33:49 with increasing effort each mile: 7:37, 6:55, 6:41, 6:41, 5:52/0.92 (6:23/mi pace)
T: 6mi tempo: 1.44mi warmup, 6x {600m tempo effort, 2:00 recovery jog}, 0.83mi cooldown. Tempo paces were 6:24/mi, 6:15, 6:12, 6:04, 5:54, 5:45!!! I love seeing those strong (for me) paces after the fact when I sync up my GPS watch. When you're in the heat of the battle, so to speak, you may not be monitoring your times but just trying to get through the workout - especially in the early a.m. darkness. We rely on the GPS watches to give us audible "go" and "rest" signals.
W: 9.2mi in 1:07 in the bone chilling 7 degree weather. Here's to "sticking to it" (more on that on "saturday" entry below)! We haven't seen what New England can really throw at a Boston Marathon trainer yet so still consider myself very lucky here. And another mild week ahead is in the forecast.
T: 5.34mi tot: 5mi + 4x ~100m strides
F: 3.33mi in 23:25 just under 7:00/mi
S: 10.5mi tot: 2mi warmup, {6.21mi 10K "time trial" in 40:18 for 6:29/mi pace}, 2.3mi cooldown.
OK, the story here is that it could have gone a lot worse and I'm happy to have actually participated in (and finished) this workout. Some of you know that in addition to my running I play basketball. Well, as part of that little "cross training" adventure I have ruptured a tendon in my small finger (shooting hand no less!). Well, friday night my healing finger that has been in a splint for weeks decides that it's time to introduce throbbing pain with "shooting" nerve pain every 60-90 minutes while I sleep. Well I decided to still get out there at 5:15 a.m. since I had already convinced a training partner Joe Loureiro that I needed to get an early start, and he agreed to move his start time earlier.
S: off due to lack of sleep - thank you once again to my aging/injured joints, tendons, etc.!
So, we have been using McMillan Running's calculator as one way to determine pace goals for those tuesday tempo interval workouts, and as a fun way to project future marathon performance. Let's take a look at some recent training/race performances and play "back of the envelope" calculation games:
- August 2011 Yankee Homecoming 10mi race in 1:09:36 projects to a 3:15 marathon (according to above calculator)
- October 2011 Bay State Half Marathon in 1:27:34 projects to a 3:04 marathon
- This Saturday's 40:18 for the 10K projects to a 3:09 marathon
Summary after 8 weeks of training for Boston:
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