5/31/2009

This was an excellent week - I ran about 92 miles (81 running and 11 equivalent miles on the bike) and had two excellent workouts on the track. This is my peak mileage week and I will start to cut mileage to begin a taper with the 5000m at the June 13th NB Twilight Meet as the goal race. I think that my mileage is high enough that I can carry the taper an extra week or so if that race does not go well and I want to take another shot at a fast time, but I have to start thinking about starting the marathon training program for the Bay State Marathon on October 18th (the real goal race this year). This coming week should also be very interesting because I am racing three times. The first race is Wednesday night at the Hollis Fast 5k (appropriately named because there is a net 224 foot elevation drop good for 40-45 seconds), followed by the 1500m at the NB Twilight Meet 2 on Saturday night (looking to get some speed) and then the Rhody 5k in Lincoln, RI on Sunday Morning. The Rhody race is a NE Grand Prix event. I should be pretty spent by the end of next week but I will have a much better idea of how fast I am capable of running.

Monday: 13ish - (24mi on bike and 5+mi running) This was supposed to be a hill workout day but I had to cram everything in before noon so I did a combo run/bike day. I rode 12 miles out to Silver Lake to meet Brian and Trent and on the way I hammered up Depot Rd and stopped to do 4 hard repeats up Long Hill Rd. We ran a little over 5 miles and then I rode another 12 miles home.

Tuesday:

• AM: 10 mi+ (75:38) Nice easy run to shake out the legs after the hard workout yesterday.
• PM: 4 mi (30:03) Easy run in the woods in Groton. Just to get in the miles.
  

Wednesday:

• AM: 4 mi (29:07) Easy run in the Yudicky Farm trails. It was raining and really muddy, but it was fun.
  
• PM: 11 mi (73ish) 3 mi w/up, 4x1600m @5k pace w/ 800m rest + 2.5mi c/down. I have been looking forward to this workout since the race on Saturday night because I wanted to prove to myself that I can run 4:55 mile pace comfortably and have a shot at running 15:20 for the 5k this year. The weather was ideal because the rain held off and it was only 49 degrees with no wind. I eased into the workout and gradually dropped the times for the first three then let it out a bit on the 4th repeat to see how it felt. My splits and rests were 4:56 (4:22), 4:54 (4:39), 4:52 (4:43), 4:47. I pretty much ran even splits for each of the miles although my first quarter was probably 1-2 seconds quick for the first three repeats. I was well within myself for the first three and could easily have gone faster - exactly how it should be. I was pushing a bit on the fourth one but not too bad. I probably went a little too fast but I am not racing again until next Wednesday. Get lots of rest and run easy the next two days.
  

Thursday:

• AM: 10 mi (74:47) This was a really slow run to just work out the legs. My legs were not sore but they were amazingly tired.
  
• PM: 10.1 miles on the stationary bike (30 minutes). I also lifted at the gym.
  

Friday:

• AM: 5.2 mi (38:) Easy morning run.
  
• PM: 10 mi (66:40) I was feeling pretty good and wanted to stretch out the legs a bit so I did a slightly up-tempo run. It felt really good but hopefully did not make tomorrow's workout any harder.
  

Saturday: 10.5 mi (70+) 3 mi w/up, 2 x (4x400m) @ slightly faster than 5k pace + 8x200m @ full speed & 2.2 mi c/down. I took 200m rest between the 400's and 400m after each set and 200m rest after each 200. The intention of this workout was to do some overspeed work and improve my leg turn-over and efficiency. The first set of 400's was pretty easy but the second set got much harder. The 200's were slightly frustrating because I could not crack 30 seconds, but I should be happy because I never thought that I would be able to do full speed 200's ever again after tearing my achilles 10 years ago. My splits and rests were: 67. 7 (67), 67.5 (78), 68.2 (78), 67.8 (2:17) 67.6 (72), 68.3 (72), 67.9 (73), 67.7 (3:14), 30.2 (75), 31.5 (79), 30.9 (83), 30.7 (88), 31.2 (88), 30.4 (84), 31.0 (81), 30.1 - pretty consistent, especially on the 400's. Overall this was a good workout and will hopefully get some speed into my old legs.

Sunday: 12 mi (1:28:59) This was a nice, slow recovery run after yesterday's hard effort. I was surprised at how fried my legs were and how tired I feel today. It is a good thing that I do not race for another 3 days. I am sure that I will be recovered in time.

5/24/2009

I would have to rate this week much higher than last week because I got in a lot more miles, I ran two good workouts and I ran my first good race of the year. I ended the week with 88.5 miles (78.5 running miles and 30 miles of riding = 10 equivalent miles) and should be able to top that this week since I am not racing again until next Wednesday night. Racing well this week means a lot because it means that all the time I am spending training is not for naught. I was starting to wonder. The 15:39 5k time equates to pretty much what I thought I should have run last week at the Bedford 12k. I am planning on doing a hard hill workout tomorrow and then hammer the workout on Wednesday night (4x1600m @ 5k pace).

Monday:

• AM: 11 mi ride (36ish) Easy ride in place of the morning run.
• PM: 8 mi (54:41) This was the first of the Monday hill workouts so I did not want to go too hard. I did a loop at work with some big hills - I started out on a long steady climb at about 1.5-2 miles and then did 4 hard repeats on a shorter, steeper climb. I finished by doing a hard mile down the long hill I came up at the start. Below is the altitude profile. I lifted when I got back to the gym.
  

Tuesday:

• AM: 8 mi+ (57:59) Nice easy run to shake out the legs after the hard run yesterday.
• PM: 5.5 mi+ (39:25) Easy run in the woods in Groton. I was not planning on going this far but I got lost again.
  

Wednesday:

• AM: 19 mi ride - Easy 11+ mile ride in place of the morning run plus I rode to and from the workout in the evening and it was about 8.5 miles round trip.
  
• PM: 10.25 mi (71:25) 4 x (2 x 400m + 800m) with 1/2 the distance of rest. My splits and rest intervals were 72 (82), 71 (83), 2:28 (2:40), 72 (82), 72 (81), 2:28 (2:53), 73 (85) 70 (87), 2:27 (3:02), 72 (77), 71 (87), 2:25. The 4's and the first two 8's were pretty easy but the last two 8's were a bit tough because it was pretty warm (81 degrees) a bit windy on one of the straights. Even though the ride there was only a little over 4 miles, my legs felt pretty flat for the first half of the workout. I may not do that again. I did not wear my HR monitor because the battery in the chest strap is dead. Go really easy tomorrow.
  

Thursday:

• AM: 6.25 mi (47:49) I had a hard time getting myself out the door this morning and did not get out until almost 7:30AM. Once I got going I felt pretty good, but I was going really SLOOOOOOWWWW. I think that is just what I needed to recover from yesterday though.
• PM: 4.5ish (31:30) I stopped in Groton to run on some trails near Cow Pond Brook (South of Massapoag Pond). There are a ton of trails out there and I just noticed that the Haystack Observatory is close by. Maybe I will try to find it one of these days.
  

Friday: 6.25 mi (45:09) This was the same run as yesterday morning at about the same time. I felt like I was going about the same pace but it ended up being roughly 30 seconds/mile faster. I was so tired today that I skipped my afternoon run and took a nap. Hopefully this will help me tomorrow in the race.

Saturday: 9+ mi (60:20) I ran the 5000m at the New Balance Twilight Series meet 1 and finished in a time of 15:39.49. I put in a seed time of 15:45 and felt like I could run somewhere between 15:30 and 15:45 if things went well. I did a 3 mile warm up and 3 mile cool down. See my post on the meet for more details and pictures.

Sunday: 17.5 mi (120:43) This was the same route as last weekend with a additional 0.5 mile loop added at the end. Even after last night's race I felt pretty good on this run and not too tired. It was 70 degrees and a bit humid. When I got back I weighed in at 160.0 pounds, a low for me in quite a long time. I am shooting to get my weight down to 155ish pounds before the fall.

New Balance Twilight Series, Meet 1

I took a drive down to Bentley College in Waltham, MA Saturday night to run the 5000m in the first of three New Balance Twilight Series track meets. I really wanted to get some speed into my legs and I figured that this was a good opportunity to run fast since it was on the track, in the evening (I always run faster in the evening) and there was plenty of competition. The weather cooperated as the 90+ degree heat from the day before was replaced with cool, crisp 60 degree air. The wind was not too bad and eventually nearly completely died away by the time the gun went off at 7:10PM.

I was not so sure how I was going to do because I was extremely tired over the last couple days and I skipped a run on Friday afternoon, opting for a nap, and also skipped an early morning run on Saturday in favor of sleeping in. I also had heart burn or acid reflux all day long on Saturday - I should not have eaten fried clams the night before! Anyway, I usually do a 2 mile warm up before a race but decided to run a 3 mile warm up tonight to hopefully loosen things up and get the blood flowing. In the beginning of the warm up my legs felt heavy and my diaphragm felt very tight. By the end of the warm up, though, I started to feel pretty darn good. I stretched out well, did some strides and got ready for the start.

When the gun went off the rabbit took of at 68 seconds/400m pace - way too fast for me at this point. I did not get all of my splits, but I hit the 400m mark in 74 seconds and the 800m mark in 2:31. This is where I made my only (major) mistake in the race. I was unsure of my strength and did not want to blow up in the last mile so I let a group of guys in front of me (Matthew Haringa, Brian Lombardo, Andrew Erwin, Steven Kinney and Kevin Somers) go and I think they hit 800m in about 2:25ish. They opened up a 30m+ lead on me which remained for the rest of the race and I ended up running in no-mans land for most of the race. If I had gone with them in the first mile I probably would not have used up too much energy and I would have finished 5-10 seconds faster (presumably). Oh well, lesson learned. I hit the 1600m split in 5:01.7 and hit 74 second laps with the exception of the second lap. I continued this trend in mile 2 where I hit pretty even 75+ second laps and split 10:04 (5:02.7) for 3200m and passed one or two guys who dropped off the back of the group in front of me. This is when I started to feel confident and I started driving for the finish and to hopefully catch some the the guys in the group ahead of me. I did a pretty good job as I passed 4800m in 15:04 (4:59.6), my quickest mile of the race, and drove home the last 200m in 35 seconds to cross the line in 15:39.49. I came within 3 seconds of catching the back of the group in front of me. Finally, a good race!

I forgot how much I like racing on the track before this race. I am looking forward to doing the other two meets in this series and looking for a couple other smaller meets after that with the hope of getting my 5k time down to 15:20 (or better). Since the Rhody 5k (a NE Grand Prix race) is on June 7th and the second meet is on June 6th I will probably run the 1500m in that meet. I will run the 5000m in the 3rd meet.

I just noticed that it was almost exactly 10 years ago (10 years and 1 month) the last time I raced a 5000m on the track at the 1999 Penn Relays. On 4/22/1999 I ran my PR of 14:32.29, more than a minute faster than this race, as my first race of the spring track season. The scary thing is that I did that race off just mileage, no speed work yet, and my splits were 4:35, 9:15 (4:40), 14:00 (4:45), 14:32 (:32). The next two races I did that season were a 1500m (3:49:01) and 3000m (8:21.07, my PR) before I tore my achilles the following week during a speed workout. That was when I was forced into what I thought was permanent retirement. Memories ....

Photos by Tom Derderian of the GBTC. More can be found here.

5/17/2009

I took an extra day to think about my race at the Bedford 12k before posting so that I could get the right perspective. I was really looking forward to the race and had really high hopes of finally nailing a good race that I was happy with. Going into the race my goal was to run sub-40 (5:22 pace) and score in the top 20. I cut my mileage from the mid 80-90 mile range down to 67.5 miles and felt well rested. I got to Bedford at about 7:30 AM to scope things out and it looked like we were going to have ideal racing weather. It was 55-60 degrees and there was barely any wind. Well, things did not pan out as I ran 41:07 (5:31 pace) for 33rd place.

I don't think that I necessarily had a bad race, but I just could not get rolling. I made a point of getting out conservatively because I know that at these Grand Prix races people tend to go out pretty aggresively. I was planning to go through the first mile in about 5:20 and I hit it in 5:11. After that I settled into a group of guys (Jim Pawlicki and I think Scott Anderson were in there) and we seemed to gradually slow down in miles 2-5: 10:35 (5:24), 16:12 (5:37), 21:50 (5:38) and 27:26 (5:35). I think that we went through 5k in about 16:45 and the 5 mile split was better than any 5 mile race that I have done in the last 2-3 years since getting back into running. At this point there was a group of guys in front of us (Craig Fram, Wayne Levy, John Fortescue and Jason Cakouros) who I was focusing on. I really thought that I could reel them in but was never able to make up any ground on them in the last 2.5 miles. We were able to pick it up a bit in mile 6, which passed in 32:56 (5:30), but gave back the time in mile 7 as we ran our slowest mile in 5:41. I had visions of having a really fast finish on the track but by the time I hit the track I was dead and just holding on. I covered the last 0.45 miles in 2:30 and was able to barely hold off a last second charge by Ed Breen of GBTC. Overall, not a great race.

The pictures are thanks to Steve Wolfe and Jim Johnson.

This week was 'alright'. I intentionally took this week easy so that I cold hopefully race well. I hit 67.5 miles and 59.5 of those miles were actually running miles. So, I got a lot of rest, had a decent workout and a mediocre race. Based on the race results this week I am going to step things up a bit starting next week by adding a hill workout on Mondays and getting my mileage back up to 80-100 mpw. I am also going to do several 5k races to get some speed in my legs in the near future - the NB Boston Twilight series on May 23rd and June 13th, the Hollis Apple Country Fast 5k on June 3rd and the Rhody 5k in Providence on June 7th.

Monday: 20.55 mi (60:00) on the stationary bike then 2 miles on the treadmill (15:11) to shake out the legs. I just wanted to get in a real easy workout after the hard run yesterday. Surprisingly, I feel pretty good today. This will be the only ride of the week.

Tuesday: 9 mi (60:45) I only did one run today again to give my body some rest. It was supposed to be a real easy run but went a bit quicker than I expected. I did 5 x 10 second hill repeats during the run at full speed with at least 2 minutes of rest in between. I have read that Nate Jenkins has had a lot of success doing these through out the week to maintain speed and power (based on Renato Canova training I believe).

Wednesday: ~9 mi () About 3.5 mi warm-up, 10x400m @ 5k pace w/ 200m rest and then 2 mile cool. This workout was just intended as a pace workout - I wanted to feel good running 5k pace but not blast my legs so that I can still run well this weekend. My splits and rests were:

74 (83), 75 (81), 74 (75), 75 (77), 72 (83), 71 (83), 72 (81), 74 (82), 75 (78), 72

It was extremely windy but I still had a hard time running slow enough. The goal was to run them all at 75 seconds but I started drifting down to 71/72 seconds before I dialed it back. My heart rate only got as high as 182bpm (~90% of HRM) during the repeats and recovered to about 150bpm during each rest period and I kept the rests pretty short. Hopefully this workout is a sign that things are starting to turn and that I will start racing well. The output of my heart rate monitor is shown below. Run easy tomorrow and Friday and get rested up for Saturday.

Thursday: 8+ mi (59:40) I took it really easy today and just got the run done. Finished with an acceleration and stretched.

Friday: 5.2 mi (37:48) A really easy run to shake out the legs.

Saturday: 11.5 mi - 2 mi w/up, 12k = 7.45 mi race (41:07) and 2 mi c/dwn.

Sunday: 17 mi (1:57:59) Easy long run. Nothing special.

5/10/2009

I did not race this week but I got in 96.2 equivalent miles (63.8 miles of cycling, 4 miles on the elliptical trainer and 68.2 miles of running) and 2 good workouts. I really want to race well next weekend at the Bedford 12k, which is a New England Grand Prix race, so I thing that I am going to back off the mileage this coming week by cutting back on the riding.

Monday:

AM - 22.3 mi (1hr) on the stationary bike + 2 miles running (15:00) at work during lunch. This was probably the hardest I have ridden yet. I warmed up for 20 minutes and then did a fartlek type workout of 1 minute hard, 1 minute easy for 30 minutes. After I got off the bike I did any easy 2 miles on the treadmill to shake out the legs.

PM - ~5.25 mi (38:10) I stopped to run on the trails in the Massapoag Pond Conservation Land in Dunstable (maybe Groton), MA. I had not run here before so it was nice to get on some new trails. I felt good but got lost and went a tad bit further than I wanted.

Tuesday:

AM - 21 mi (1hr) on the stationary bike + 2 miles on the treadmill (15:00). This was pretty much the same workout as yesterday but easier.

PM - 5.2 mi (37:02) I went a little longer than I originally expected but I felt good tonight.

Wednesday:

AM - 3 mi (21:15) I just wanted to get a short, easy run in.

PM - 10+ mi () This was track workout night but instead of doing repeats on the track we headed over to a hill near the school and did hill repeats. Before the workout I was thinking that the workout was not going to be too difficult, but I was wrong. The workout consisted of doing 6 repeats of hills, where each repeat was 1 short, 1 medium and 1 long hill bout followed by a ~100m stride on the flat. The short hill was probably 75m, the medium hill was about 150m and the long hill was probably as long as 300m according to mapmyrun. Each repeat totaled about 0.75mi for a total distance of 4.5mi. I did a 3.5 mile warm up and a 2 mile cool down for a total distance of 10 miles.

Thursday: 20.5 mi (1hr) on the stationary bike. I was planning on going 90 minutes and doing a second run in the evening but my legs are pretty tired from yesterday's workout and I figured that I would be better off getting some rest and going long tomorrow.

Friday:

AM - 12.5 (1:34:04) This is the run that I should have done yesterday. It was an easy 12.5 miles and I kept my heart rate below 150bpm the whole way. It comes out to 7:32 min/mi pace. At the start of the run my legs were really sore, especially my arse from the hills on Wednesday. This is exactly what happened last week when I did a long easy ride the day after a hard workout and I had a horrible race last weekend to boot. I think that I am going to switch things up and do the long easy run the day after the hard workout as my regeneration workout and move any rides to early in the week. The ride may be fine if I follow it up with a run but I did not run at all yesterday or last Thursday. I do not want to experiment next week because the 16th is the Bedford 12k (a New England Grand Prix race) and I would like to run well there, but the following week I will probably do a 50/50 mix of biking and running to see if I feel any better.

PM - 4 mi (30:) I was really tired but wanted to get in an easy run tonight so I slogged out 4 miles on the treadmill at about 9:30 at night. Blah...

Saturday: 12.5 mi (1:30) I wanted to get in some decent mileage today but also wanted to give my hip a little rest so I did the old run to the gym, do 30 minutes on the elliptical trainer and run home bit. I got 8 miles of running and 4 equivalent miles on the elliptical trainer.

Sunday: 15.75 (1:37:09) Well, I was supposed to do the Medical Center 6k race today but I was just not feeling it. I had far more reasons not to run that I had to run (it is Mother's day and my wife would kill me, it was SUPER windy today, I would have had to get out of bed early, I wanted to drink a beer the night before, and the list goes on ...) so I decided to bag it and get in a good progressive long run at MP instead. Plus, next weekend is the Bedford 12k, which is a New England Grand Prix race, and I want to have a good race there. I was not sure how things would turn out, but I headed down to Mine Falls Park since I would get some shelter from the wind there.

I really wanted to get a good idea of pace and heart rate so I wanted to wear my Sunnto T6 with the foot pod for pacing information. Unfortunately, ever since the day I bought the foot pod it has not worked - any sudden impact will cause it to turn off so when I run it will turn off within the first 1/2 mile or so. I tried sending it back to Suunto last year to get it fixed but they said there was nothing wrong with it and that the tech who diagnosed it ran with it for a week with no problems. BS! Since the foot pod connected with no problems and only shut off when thumped, I figured it was a hardware issue (loose connection) rather than a software or wireless protocol issue. So, early Sunday morning I tore the footpod apart, re-soldered all of the connections, cleaned all of the contact surfaces and put it all back together again. Voila! It worked again without shutting off. I am sure the warranty is void, but what the hell. Anyway, I wore the foot pod and heart rate monitor on the run, although I did not calibrate the foot pod, and just went based on heart rate. LT pace for me is in the 170-175bpm range so I tried to work toward that and keep it there for 5-6 miles. I started out at an easy 7min/mi pace for the first 3 miles then eased into MP over the next three miles (~5:50-5:40 pace), which I held for 8 miles. I finished up with an easy 2 mile cool down. My mile splits were 7:11, 14:11 (6:59), 21:08 (6:57), 27:33 (6:25), 33:47 (6:14), 39:29 (5:42), 45:09 (5:40), 50:40 (5:30), 56:14 (5:33), 61:45 (5:31), 67:17 (5:31), 72:48 (5:31), 78:02 (5:13), 84:50 (6:48), 91:56 (7:05), 97:09 (5:13). I pushed the last mile pretty hard, but still felt comfortably near LT. The last 5 miles of MP work passed in 27:19, which is better than any 5 mile race I did last year, the last 10k probably passed in 33:55, based on my mile splits and the last 10 miles took 56:54. Even if the watch was optimistic by 2-3%, because it was not calibrated, then the workout was quite good. Below is a graph of HR, EPOC, VO2, pace and R-R (the time between heart beats). It looks like I pushed the workout a bit too much, based on the EPOC, but this was probably mainly due to the last mile being so much quicker than the others.

IE Fix (finally)

I heard from several people that my blog does not work with IE but I did not know because I try not to use Microsoft products. I know that the site always works with Firefox and I have tested it with Chrome. Well, after quite a bit of time trying different templates, iteratively removing each widget and module on the blog and modifying the formatting, pictures and links I was finally able to get it to work with IE. I used the Developer Tools (hit F12 in IE) and first tried sending the page to W3.org for validation. There were 735 errors on the page so figured that I had to find a better way around the problem. The next thing I tried was disabling scripts in IE. When I loaded my blog in IE this time it did not hang but I noticed that my weekly mileage graph was not updating and when I enabled scripts the graph populated but IE hung. Bingo! This solved my dilemma about which graph style to use - I could not decide between the basic graph I had and the fancy Google widget that allows zooming and panning across different dates. I figured that the fancier plot with all the bells and whistles would cause problems but it was the other way around. So, issue closed.

5/3/2009

It is hard to believe that it is May already. I got in a total of 86.5+ equivalent miles made up of 6 miles on the elliptical trainer, 51.4 miles on the bike and 63.5 miles of running. This was much better than the last couple of weeks and I also did my second track workout and first race of the season. The race was probably the low-light of the week, but I am working towards a larger goal so this is just another mile marker along the journey I guess.

Just before heading out the door for my run on Friday UPS showed up at the door with a package from New Balance. My wife gave me a look like 'oh no, not another pair of shoes..', but I had not ordered any new shoes so I was a bit confused. It turns out that I had signed up to be a wear tester for New Balance either last summer or the summer before and I guess that I had finally been selected to participate in a study. Not too shabby - free shoes! The shoes are a lite weight, neutral model for mid-foot strikers. My first impression is that they definitely got the aesthetics right and it is a nice ride too. I like a bit more support for longer runs, but the shoes is really lite. My only real complaint is that the toe-box is a tad tight.

Monday:

• AM - 21.1 mi (1hr) On the stationary bike at work during lunch. I pushed pretty hard and kept my cadence at about 95+ rpm.
  
• PM - ~4.25 mi (31:50) Hard to say how far it was exactly because I was running in the woods in Groton and/or Dunstable. The trails were a bit rough because of all the rocks and roots but it was so nice to just run through the woods and not feel any pain.
  

Tuesday: 12.5 mi (1:29:33) I ran to the gym, did 30 minutes on the elliptical trainer and then ran home and around the circle. It works out to about 4 equivalent miles on the elliptical and 8.5 miles of running. I was planning on running a short 3 mile shake-out in the evening but I got caught in a meeting at work and did not get home until almost 10PM.

Wednesday:

• AM - 4 mi (28:10) This was just an easy run in the morning to shake out my legs and get ready for the workout this afternoon.
  
• PM - 10 mi (69:38) Track workout tonight: 2.2 mi warm-up followed by 2x800 + 1x1600 twice w/ half the distance in rest and a 2.2 mile cool-down.
  

I wanted to get a better idea of where I am in my training so I wore my heart rate monitor for the first time in about 6 months. I use the Suunto t6 and like it a lot since it provides quite a bit of information about how my training is going in addition to the basic HR info. The weather was phenomenal tonight since it was about 65 degrees and the dew point was down around 10-15 degrees. It was actually so dry that I had a hard time getting my heart rate monitor to work correctly since I was not sweating. I felt just okay tonight, not great, but still wanted to hit some decent times. I set my heart rate upper limit to 190bpm (my max HR is about 200-205bpm) because I did not want to push it too hard and ended up bumping against it in the last four intervals. The following table is a summary of times and HRs:

Bout	Distance	Repeat Time	Recovery Time	Average HR
1	800m	2:27	2:41	179
2	800m	2:29	2:45	185
3	1600m	5:09	5:26	187
4	800m	2:30	2:49	183
5	800m	2:31	2:56	182
6	1600m	5:04	-	185

The first two 800's were not too bad but I had to focus for the mile repeats. I did doze off a bit on the last two 800's, which is evident from the heart rates. The rest intervals started creeping up at the end but we were trying to keep the whole group together at the start of each repeat.

In the plots below the top curve is heart rate, the middle curve is EPOC and the bottom curve is VO2. EPOC is Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption and measures the amount of oxygen that the body needs to recover from physical exertion. It describes the accumulating training load. Based on the EPOC this workout was just the right level where I should get a good training response. If I had gone much faster or longer things would have been much different. I need to take it easy tomorrow and make sure that I recover, especially since I am racing this weekend.

Thursday: 30.3 miles on the bike (1:30:00) - This was just a recovery ride. and gives me about 10 equivalent miles. I was a bit surprised that my heart rate only got as high as 125bpm and averaged around 117bpm. That is hardly as high as it gets when I go for a walk. Oh well. I was also supposed to do a short run this evening but got caught up at work again. If this keeps up I am going to have to quit my job!

Friday: 8.25 mi (59:42) I wanted to get in a decent run but not over work myself so I wore my HR monitor and set the upper HR limit to 150bpm. I bumped up against the limit a couple times but it allowed me to have a good run and averaged 142bpm (right at 70% HRM). I am a little surprised by my quads are quite sore from yesterday's ride. I went pretty easy yesterday and just did a recovery ride so I am hoping that this is not a sign that I am getting sick (every one else in the family has a cold, and no, it is not the Swine Flu ... or should I call it Influenza H1N1). I skipped the afternoon run again. I have to get out of this habit.

Saturday:

• AM -9.1 mi () I ran the Derry Foothealth 5k and won in 16:28. I am glad that I ran this race to get the first race under my belt, but I felt like absolute garbage the whole day. The soreness in my legs from yesterday was much worse, probably because the race was early morning, and I felt like I had already raced a 5k at the start of the race. Before the start Michael Wade warned me about potential wrong turns so I ran the whole course as a warm up before hand. This paid off because I felt much more confident about where to start my kick at the end of the race. The race got off to a late start because they were waiting for a police detail who ended up doing nothing. This is pretty much par for the small races though. I thought he was going to lead the race but he just parked in the road and ate his donuts. From the graph of elevation below (from my watch - the absolute elevation is not correct but the relative number are) the first mile was pretty much flat or slightly down hill and we hit it in 5:17. There was someone right on my shoulder at 1 mile, probably Jason Porter, so I tried to push the second mile and drop him going up the hill. I think that he actually closed on me, although he never pulled even with me so I am still not absolutely sure who it was. As we crested the hill we hit the two mile mark in 10:55, a pathetic 5:38 second mile. Going into the race I had visions of running sub 16 minutes, but at this point I was starting to think that we were going to run over 17 minutes. I knew it was down hill the rest of the way and the breathing over my shoulder was very laboured so I put the hammer down and was able to run a 5:02 third mile to pass three miles in 15:58 and finally drop Jason. I finished in a modest 16:28. I did a cool down around the course a third time for good measure and was in agony the whole time. My legs were so sore. I am not sure if it was the work out on Wednesday, the ride on Thursday or that I am a big wuss, but this was not a good day. I am hoping that I got the bad race out of the way today and can have good races in the next two weekends.
  

• PM - 4 (29:38) I really needed to work the soreness out of my legs so I did a really easy 4 mile run this afternoon. It really sucked but I think that it will pay off in the long run.
  

Sunday: 17.5 mi (2:07:31) I started the morning out on the elliptical trainer for 45 minutes (6 equivalent miles) because my quads were so sore I could hardly walk down the stairs in the morning. After the gym I headed over to Mine Falls Park to run 12 miles with Kevin and Brian. I think that going to the gym was a smart move because I felt "alright" on the run. I was surprised that we averaged about 7:15-7:30 pace but my heart rate only averaged 139bpm. Rest and try to recover this week.