Time To Run

As I started training for the upcoming 10k I needed to decide what my 10k goal time would be. I had no idea what to use and decided on 7:24min/mile since I had progressed to that speed in a workout I did which called for 3 1 mile repeats that got progressively harder. I have actually run under 42 minutes for the 10k but that was more than 10 years ago and in my recent sporadic running history have been more around the 50 minute mark. So I figured I'd hopefully be somewhere between that.

Yesterday the plan called for intervals at 30 sec/mile faster than 10k goal pace. I got through the 1200, survived the 800 barely and when it came time to do a 400 just couldn't maintain the pace so I stopped. I couldn't get enough air. So today in my email I get an article in my Complete Running Network newsletter that could have been written just for me.

It talked about how the most common mistake in speedwork is running too fast. They should be a test of the VO2max and something that can be maintained instead of an anaerobic workout that offers diminishing returns. As I reviewed my training for the race I noticed that from the first tempo workout I was remarking that I thought it was a little too hard to be a tempo run in that I didn't feel I had anything left. Since then I have had a few tempo workouts where I haven't been able to complete the whole thing or do a cooldown afterwards. This culminated in yesterday's non finishing of the speed workout.

So I have decided to back off my 10k goal pace to about 7:35 and adjust further workouts towards that level. Being my first race since I started trying to run seriously this is more about finding out what my pace should be rather than setting a record.

Posted by Jeff at 03:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

If you are close to 40 you probably remember back in elementary school when we were told that the U.S. was going to join the rest of the world and go metric. Inches, feet, yards would be replaced by millimeters, centimeters, and meters. We needed to learn that because eventually everything would be on the metric system. Well, that doesn't seem to have happened though it is curious that the most popular running races are done in kilometers though when looking at our performance most of us are concerned with our minutes per mil stat rather than minutes per kilometer.
Anyways, I am in Manila for a business trip and have been doing my runs on the hotel's fitness center treadmill. I have specific paces/speeds I want to run as part of my training plan for the upcoming 10k I am going to do and they are all based on min/mile and mph. So I had to convert all those to km's. My 7.6mph/7:53 tempo pace just became 12.3kph and so on. Julie in a recent blogpost wrote about how as she was doing crosstraining on the bicycle she compared her pace to those of elite runners who seem to effortlessly glide through 5 min/miles when it is hard to imagine doing that for even one mile for most of us. I am a display watcher on the treadmill and it was uplifting for just a second to see that I am knocking off the distance at slightly over 5min/per but then I settle into the reality that we are talking km/min instead of mile/min.

So I am doing ok in getting ready for the Thanksgiving Day 10k. Because of the trip I took a 6 week training plan and planned on repeating the weeks where I travelled to allow for the jet lag recovery to make it an 8 week program.
Another thing interesting about being over here is that besides my workouts being logged in by kilometers, I am also 15-18 hours ahead of you runners in the U.S. So when I run at 9am in the morning in Manila and enter my workout, it is only 6pm the night before on the West Coast so my workout stays listed on the right side of the home page for a long time. So if you have been wondering who that guy is who posts workouts for the next day then that is me and you'll have to live with it for the next week and a half....lol

Posted by Jeff at 12:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)