2/1/2009

I came across the picture to the left when I was cleaning out my laptop. Man, that was a long time ago - it was the 1000m preliminaries of the 1995 indoor Division III New England Championships. I ran 2:38.15 to qualify and ran 2:29.95 (second place was 2:29.96) in the final to win by a hair. It was probably the closest race I have ever run. Man, I was thin back then.

Also, I finally figured out how to get a basic Java based calculator to work for the Daniels treadmill incline conversion for effective pace. You can find it in the right-hand column. I will enhance it when I get time to give more information, to allow pace as an input and provide pace as an additional output. I may also modify it so that it returns the effective pace for other treadmill inclines greater than and less than the desired input (basically a table output). Try it out and let me know what you think.

It is hard to believe that it is already February. Man, time flies. This was a much better week than last week since I hit about 74 miles and got in two good, hard efforts. I am getting really tired of the cold, ice and snow. We had maybe 2-3 days above freezing in the last 2-3 weeks, a couple feet of snow and 3 ice storms. The ice is the worst because it is so treacherous running outside that I have to do most of my running on the treadmill.


Monday:

• AM - 7 mi (5:45) Yeah, it was really slow. I did not think that I could run this slow but I think that I am fighting something. I also only got 6 hours of sleep last night.
• PM - 4 mi (30:25) Yeah, slow again. Just plugging along putting in the mileage.
  

Tuesday: 8+ mi (56ish) This was supposed to be an easy run but I think it was close to 8.5mi and probably closer to 55 minutes. Felt good but wanted to rest for tomorrow's workout.

Wednesday:

• AM - 3 mi (22:50) Real slow and easy.
  
• PM - 9 mi (63:00) I did a slow 2mi warm up and 2 mi cool down along with a 5mi steady-state run. I tried to do the SS run at 9.4mph/3% incline, which is equivalent to 5:58 pace, but it was just way too hard for me. I backed off to 9.1mph/3% incline, which is equivalent to 6:10 pace, and this was much better. Near the end I was starting to hurt so I ran the last 1.25 miles at 10mph/1% incline and this was the easiest, by far. I am not sure how to interpret this: either Daniels' charts are off or I suck at hills. I am going with the later and figure that this is an opportunity for me to work on a weakness. I will continue to run my SS runs at an incline between 3-5%.
  

Thursday: 9 mi (69:40) Yes, this was a really slow run, but I just wanted to make sure that I am recovered for the hill fartlek that I am going to run tomorrow. I started out at 8min/mi pace and worked down to 7:30 pace. My right hip flexor was a bit tender so I will have to keep an eye on that.

Friday:

• AM - 3 mi (22:35) Real slow again just to make sure that I have a good workout this afternoon.
  
• PM - 10 mi (72:30) I ran a 3 mile warm-up, 5 mile workout and 2 mile cool-down. The warm-up and cool-down were run at 7:00-8:00 min/mile pace. I did the hill fartlek at a constant pace (8.5 mph / 7:03 pace) and alternated 1/4 @ 1% incline and 1/4 mile at an increased incline. I started at 3.5% incline and increased 0.5% each time to finish at 8% incline for the final bout. The following table shows the incline and equivalent pace for each section along with a comment about how difficult each session was. I added the comment before I calculated the equivalent pace.

Bout	Incline	Effective Pace	Comment
1	3.5%	6:21	Easy
2	4.0%	6:08	Easy
3	4.5%	5:55	Easy
4	5.0%	5:43	Moderate
5	5.5%	5:32	Good
6	6.0%	5:22	Good
7	6.5%	5:12	Good
8	7.0%	5:04	Hard
9	7.5%	4:55	Hard
10	8.0%	4:47	Glad I only had to do one

This may be the last time I use tables - I can not figure out why there is a huge space before the table and it does not show up in the page preview or the HTML code. Hmmmm....

Update: As I said, I figured out a hack to get rid of the space but am not happy with it. I have to do a bit of post processing of the HTML code and I have higher expectations of Google.

Saturday: 8.5 mi (56ish) This was a nice and easy run just to recover from yesterday. I was trying to run really easy so I am surprised that it was sub 7min/mi pace.

Sunday: 12.4 mi (1:28ish) I was lazy and just ran the same route as last weekend. This winter is dragging on too long because it was 15 degrees and I did not think that it was too cold. Easy pace and I felt pretty good.

Next week should be pretty similar to this one - I will probably hit between 75 and 80 miles, get in a 7 mile steady-state run and probably try to fit in 1-2 hill fartleks.