Old Man Drummer

Well, another consistent week of training has come and gone. Training camp at Keene marks the team's return to Drummer Hill Road, our winter workout residence. It's about two miles from campus and is one mile of brutal, brutal climbing. The hill starts right away with the steepest section, a several hundred meter climb that just trashes you no matter what speed you're running. From the bottom of the hill to the top of the steepest part is a speed limit sign we use as a "400" because it equates (eerily so) with a 400 on a track. Obviously it's a little less than 400 meters, since we're not running 60 second quarters up a speed hill, but we just call then Drummer quarters. After a few mile repeats on Drummer, (usually 2-3 depending on ability level) we'll do some quarters and 200s (we just stop halfway up the "400").

Anyway, here's the week's log:

Monday- AM 5 easy
PM- 7 easy, strides.

Tuesday- AM- 3 easy indoors (we have a little 160y jogging track we avoid at all costs- it's concrete and sucky) with Peter

PM- Drummer- 2 miles w/u, 2xDrummer Mile (5:53, 5:46), 4x4 Drummer quarters- 61, 60, 61, 61, 4xDrummer 200s- 28, 29, 30, 28. 2 miles back to school, plyometrics (one legged hops for distance, 10xbounding up stairs), 2 miles c/d.

Wednesday- AM- 5 easy with Peter, 38:20
PM- 7+ easy, (52 minutes, so maybe 7.5) 6x slight downhill strides after

Thursday- AM: 3+ easy with Peter
PM- 2.5 w/u, 4xmile on a road course we use- going one way is uphill, the other way is downhill. We did up, down, up, down with 4 minutes jogging rest in between. 5:03, 4:56, 5:00, 4:46. Very tough workout- I was even more sore today from Drummer than I was on Wednesday. It didn't help that it was negative 15 degrees out before the windchill and that I stuck to trainers because flats still hurt my feet. Still, a pretty solid effort. 2.5 c/d

Friday- AM- 5+ easy indoors with Peter
PM- 7 miles easy, 6x slight uphill strides.

Saturday- Tufts Invite, just a speed day. I ran the 600 in 1:24.7 (26.x, 27.x, (54) 30.xx. Bad, bad rig. I was never really in the race and just kind of gave up mentally. An hour later I came back and ran the 1000 and pr'd with a 2:28.75 win. I was lucky in that the early pace was pretty quick (59, 1:59) then with 300 to go I just went for it. It wasn't a hard race, I was pretty pleased. After another hour break, I ran a leg on our 4x400 team and split 52.0 (25.4/26.6), another PR. I was pleased my speed is where it is right now- last year at this meet I only ran 2:00 for the 800 and 55 on the relay, and that was only about three weeks removed from a 4:11 mile. My strength is really good right now- I'm excited to see what happens in a month or so when I start doing some fast stuff as a prep for indoor nationals. With warmups and cooldowns and stuff I got in 13 on the day.

Sunday- Blizzard hit Keene! Only a few of the Keene guys braved the storm with me, so thank you Eric and Brandon for going the first ten miles with me. There was about 4 inches of snow on the roads on top of a layer of ice, so it took me 2 hours to run my 15 miles, but I got it in.

PM- My friend Amy, who runs for us, needed someone to run with, so I did 4 miles indoors with her. Peter saw me coming down from the indoor jogging track and was less than pleased about my "Secret Miles." Whoops.

Total- 99, a very good week. I was pleased with my times in the shorter events (except the 600, where I should have gone 1:22.high, 1:23 low at worst) considering I've done nothing faster than a few strides and am running something like 14 miles a day. I'm looking forward to seeing what I can do after 7 more weeks of this kind of training. The success at the shorter stuff has convinced Peter to let me run the mile at Terrier on Saturday instead of the 5k. I definitely think if I could run a 2:28 1000 on the double then I could come through the K in a mile around 2:34 and keep it rolling. We'll have to find out, though- I'm really looking forward to this mile!

Thanks for reading

Craig