Hi, everybody. The first week of 2009 proved a fruitful one- I had one of my best workouts in a long time and set a pretty significant PR at 3000 meters at the last Mini-Meet at Boston University. Here's the week's log, with a few comments and a little race analysis.
Monday:
AM- 9 miles easy, 63:30, feeling better than yesterday.
PM- 4 miles easy, no watch, approx 26 minutes.
Tuesday:
AM- 3.5 easy, including pacing my friend Kaitlin Kwiecien (sorry, KK, I probably misspelled your last name), one of UNH's 800 runners, through the last bit of her workout- an 80 second uphill quarter and a 2:55 800 over a hilly, windy course.
PM- Indoors, Hampshire Hills Dome (320m indoor track). 2.5 easy, 3x1600 in 4:36, 4:28, 4:26, with 800 meters jogging recovery (avg 3:32). Total- 4.5 miles in 24 minutes. Wore my new Victories to break 'em in, felt really good. Almost no effort required. 3 mile c/d, got hungry and felt dizzy towards the end.
Wednesday:
AM- 7 miles easy with my little brother and our friend Doug, through a blizzard (20degrees and about a foot of snow). My stubble froze over and I had a fun ice beard by the end of the run.
PM- 6 miles easy with my old high school teammate Owen, blizzard abating.
Thursday (New Years Day): Vicious hangover, off. Couldn't walk til 6:30 at night, couldn't even choke down water til 7pm. I really really can't recommend against doing that enough. I have never been that miserable in my life.
Friday-
AM: 3.5 easy w/my old high school coach, Kevin McGrath.
PM- 10 miles easy with my roommate, Geoff, 69:50. Didn't eat anything all day, was starving the whole run.
Saturday-
AM- 2 mile warmup, strides. 3000m race at the BU Mini-Meet- 2nd place with an 8:24.94, 16 second PR. After Tuesday's mile repeats, I knew I was in really good shape. I ran in 2nd or 3rd the whole way and was 4:28 through the mile. Generally in races I try to avoid listening to splits, since any time I run I'm trying to win and the pace is irrelevant, but I heard the mile split and knew I was on for a good time, since I hardly felt like I was running at all. At 800 to go, my friend Eric (Ashe, of BU) made a move and gapped me- a rookie mistake for me to let any gaps develop that late in the race. At 400 to go I made a pretty strong move to close the gap, but coming around for the last lap, the officials thought I was getting lapped and told me 2 laps to go instead of 1. I thought I had miscounted the laps and slowed, then saw the clock and realized I had to only have one left. Kicking, slowing, and kicking again cost me a little time, but I was nontheless pleased with the PR. 3 miles cooldown with Eric.
PM- 7 miles easy when I got home from BU- didn't eat again, felt really dizzy the last 3 miles.
Sunday:
AM- off
PM- 15.5 miles easy with Geoff and Jared, another Keene guy who lives near me. We ran a pretty hilly course and were chatting the whole way- fortunately, no one felt like hammering the last 5 miles (as will often happen on a long run with us) because I doubt I could have managed anything much better than the 7 minute pace we were going. 1:49:54, not sure if it was a touch longer than 15.5 or not.
Total: 82
Comments:
Not a bad week: one good workout, one good race, and 82 miles despite missing a day due to my being a retard. Not to get on the soap box and preach here (although, what the hell is a blog for, then?) but drinking is about the most retarded thing you can do if you want to be a serious runner. Especially drinking in the amounts I did on New Year's Eve. Pete, my coach, always said "the best way to fuck up a good week of training is a good night of drinking" and I totally agree with that. Still, I came away from the week with a solid PR. Tactics wise I was a little rusty, letting Eric gap me with only 800 to go, but you can't be too upset about a 16 second PR in the 3k.
I'm still at home right now, but I'll be heading back to Keene sometime this week for winter training camp. Right now the tentative plan for the next few weeks is to keep my mileage up around 90-100, get strong, get fit, and get fast. Although I do focus on the mile, I've always run well in the shorter distances when coming off a block of high mileage- in a similar vein to Steve Scott or John Walker (though that's about where the comparisons between those guys and me end).
When I get back to Keene, I'll likely switch from the tempos/long repeats mode I've been in for a while to doing heavy, heavy hill workouts. Pete is a huge fan of hills and I'll be spending most of the rest of the winter doing repeats up Drummer Hill, which I'll talk more about in my next entry.
Goodness, this is a long post. I hope no one found it too tedious to get through. You all will to forgive my rambling; I suppose it's the consequence of an English major writing a blog. If anyone has any questions, feel free to leave them as comments and I'll address them in a post. Thanks for reading guys!
Craig
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Do you think you could include a small bit on your training philosophy etc in your next post? Obviosly there are multiple ways to the top but I think it would be interesting to see what you think is most important. No big deal though, good job with the writing.
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