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Hey speedy, what’s your 1 mile time? Just for reference… 🙂
I think it is 5:54, though I don’t have a great way to look this up in my log. The only time I really pay attention to my mile time is when we do 4 x 1-mile repeats at track on Thursday nights. Two years ago I had two sub 6-minute miles during mile repeats within the same summer, and I believe they were 5:57 and 5:54. As a point of reference, my best mile before joining this track group was closer to 7:25.
The weather for today’s run was very nice. Finally a spring morning that actually felt like Spring! Temps were in the mid 50s, and the humidity was not too bad at all. The schedule today was for 60 minutes at easy pace followed by 6 x 100m stride outs.
After two really easy miles over 9:00min pace, the average pace for the remaining miles was around 8:40 pace. I tried to keep everything very chill and focus on a short stride with good form. Overall the run felt great except for the lingering soreness from P90X Legs and Back on Monday. I increased my weight slightly for P90X, and today I’m pretty sore. This didn’t really affect my stride, but it was slightly uncomfortable until I got good and loose about halfway through.
I really noticed the soreness again on the stride outs at the end. For the these my pace was around 6:30, which is slightly slower than usual. This had to do with the soreness and also being on a slight incline for all six. My final total with strides was just over 7 miles completed at 8:46 average pace.
Beast Mode…ON!
Not only is today my daughter Sara’s birthday, but it is also the birthday of my dear friend Nathan (@inthewright). Today Nathan and I did a short, but enjoyable trail run on the Blue, Orange, and Yellow trails in Edwin Warner Park.
My scheduled called for 40-minutes easy, so I decided that would be perfect for a nice little jaunt on the trails. Overall the weather was much better than yesterday’s sauna, with temps around 60 degrees and overcast skies.
As we started off on the flat part of the blue trail, we came across a very small, vividly blue bird that hopped down the trail in front of us for a little bit. I made a comment about the color of the bird and Nathan responded with something like “Based upon my research of looking at the hastily crafted bird chart on the back of the bathroom stall in the Nature Center, I would say that is an Indigo Bunting.” I knew exactly what “document” he was talking about and (1) found this funny (2) was amazed that he could remember obscure bird names simply from looking at a chart for a couple of minutes.
Anyway, the Blue trail has one challenging climb (see elevation chart above), but was otherwise perfect for a nice recovery run. My legs felt very good this morning, even on the big climb. This was nice after the tempo effort yesterday and P90X Legs and Back with Olivia last night. Our final total was just under 4-miles at 10:53 average pace. Great way to start the day.
Beast Mode….ON! ….And Happy Birthday Nathan!
Short article on Competitor.com regarding the importance of wearing an ID band while running. The article makes mention of my wife Olivia and I, along with our daughter Kate.
Two years ago Kate was running the final mile of her third kid’s marathon, and first by herself. She did a great job in the race, but unfortunately when we went to the pickup area after the finish line, she was nowhere to be found. After 30+ minutes of searching, my wife’s finally received a call from a race volunteer who had our daughter.
Before the race I had gone to RoadID.com and purchased an ID for Kate’s running shoe. I had been running with one for a while, and wanted to make sure Kate had one for her first solo race. My wife and I had both told her that if anything happened to her and someone asked how to contact her mommy or daddy to just tell them it was on her shoe. This is exactly what happened with the race volunteer and we were successfully reunited with Kate.
After this event we sent a short note to RoadID telling them the story, and they quickly asked if we would be willing to be part of their testimonial page on their web site. We worked with their staff to write a short recap of the events and sent them a picture from after the race. Since we were willing to do the testimonial, we now get free RoadID products for life, which is nice because they are vital for anyone who is a runner, biker, etc. or for kids in almost any situation.
Fast forward two years and we were again contacted by RoadID who asked for permission for Competitor.com to use our story in an article they were doing on running ID bands. Though the mention is brief, it is included in the link above.
Caballo Blanco’s Last Run: The Micah True Story (New York Times) by Barry Bearak
Wow….what an incredible article about the life and death of Micah True (a.k.a. Caballo Blanco) from the New York Times. For anyone who has read Born to Run, this is an absolute MUST READ. It contains lots of details on his life that were not in the book, lots of information on the search and rescue attempt in the Gila Wilderness, and some insight into the relationship between Caballo and characters from the book like Barefoot Ted and the author Christopher McDougall.
I think it would also be very interesting for anyone else who heard about the death of Caballo, but didn’t understand his background.
It’s long, but worth the read.
After two weeks of easy training runs it was nice to get back to a little tempo work this morning. My schedule called for 70-minutes total running, which included a 20-minute warmup, 30-minutes at 7:15 pace, and a 20-minute cool down. The temperatures this morning were in the high 60s, which was fairly nice, but the humidity was somewhat stifling.
Nathan and I met at the Edwin Warner Park Nature Center and completed our 20-minute warmup on the Harpeth River Greenway and through the park at around an 8:30 average. For the tempo portion we ran 15-minutes out and back on the greenway, but didn’t stay together because we were running at a slightly different goal pace.
Everything felt really good throughout this section, and the only thing I had to fight was the urge to run faster than 7:15. The humidity felt uncomfortable but did not seem to have much effect on my legs or breathing. I completed just over 4-miles and nailed the 7:15 average. Nathan also had a good tempo effort with a 7:17 average pace.
After grabbing a quick drink, we finished with a 20-minute cooldown on the greenway and my legs still felt good all the way to the end. Our final total was 9.2-miles completed at just under 8:00-min pace with warmup and cool down.
Beast Mode…ON!
Friday
After a pretty hard track workout last night I was surprised at how good I felt on the run this morning. The schedule called for 50 minutes at easy pace, and I ran in my Saucony Hattoris through the streets of Bellevue with Nathan and Paxton. We kept the pace very chill with the first 3 miles in the low 9:00s, and the final 2.5 miles in the high 8:00s.
Even with the easy run, the humidity was high enough that I was in a full sweat by the end of the first mile. We mixed the route up a bit with a loop around the mostly empty Bellevue Center Mall. Overall another good run with the Bellevue Trio.
Saturday
Today’s group run was through the streets of Belle Meade and incorporated the infamous “Zig Zag” route introduced to us by Edward. Note the “Zig Zag” pattern during miles 2 through 4 in the map below…
We started at Bread and Company on Hwy 100 and I was a bit unsure how many total miles the planned route would include. My schedule called for 12 to 14 miles at an easy pace, and I was hoping to not have to run extra at the end.
The entire group ran together for the first 7 miles, and kept the pace very easy (9:40s to 8:30s). After 7-miles some who only wanted 10-miles total headed back to Bread and Company where we started. The rest of us kept going down Tyne Boulevard to add a few extra miles. After the 8th mile I decided to pick up the pace a little bit and ended up running most of the rest of the route by myself.
For the next 3-miles I dropped the pace a little below 8:00, and then decided to back off a bit for the final two as a cool down (8:20s). Even though it was fairly warm throughout, I felt really good during the run, and especially during the final 5-miles. Total for today was 13.1-miles at 8:41 average pace.
Beast Mode…ON!
Tonight’s track workout with the JSRC was tough, but it was a good kind of tough. Part of the challenge was the heat which was still in the low 80s at 6pm. The other was short recoveries. Those short recoveries made it hard to maintain effort throughout the intervals.
Also, coming into the workout my legs were a bit fatigued from P90X Legs and Back on Monday and running trails yesterday, but I was able to loosen them up pretty good during a 2.5-mile warmup.
Here is a breakdown of the workout…
- Warmup + 6 x 100m stride outs
- 800m f (300m recovery)
- 400m f (1-min recovery)
- 800m f (400m recovery)
- 1200m Straights and Curves (1-min recovery)
- 600m f (200m recovery)
- 300m f (1-min recovery)
- 600m f (cool down)
With warmup and cool down my total was 7.2 miles completed. By far the toughest part for me was going from 1200m straights and curves directly into a 600m with only a 1-min static recovery. However, I was able to maintain fairly consistent splits all the way to end, and am pretty happy with my overall pacing.
Just like last week, I ran this entire workout with Nathan McCall who has made incredible progress since joining our club last fall. Unlike me (adult onset runner), Nathan was a 4-year collegiate runner at Appalachian State, so I’m expecting that pretty soon he will be lapping me during the workouts 🙂 …In the meantime it has been great to have someone else running at my same pace the last two weeks.
Beast Mode…ON!
Today I returned to the trails for the first time since running in southern Honduras on our mission trip. It was a nice change of pace from all of my recent road running and I hope to get back into a normal routine of incorporating trails at least once per week.
My schedule called for 50-minutes easy and 4 x 100m stride outs. Of the three main trails in Percy and Edwin Warner Parks, only the red is long enough to occupy 50 minutes since it is 4.5 miles. It would take two laps on either the white or the blue trails because they are only 2.5 miles each.
My legs were really sore heading into this run from doing P90X Legs and Back on Monday night for the first time in two weeks. Overall it didn’t have a big impact on the effort, but was something I could feel for the first half of the run. For the run I kept the pace very conservative with with a steady progression from a first mile of 12:23 to a final mile of 10:27. The red trail has a total elevation gain of almost 1,200 ft in only 4.5 miles, so needless to say this is a challenging route. However, I felt pretty good throughout, even on the tough climbs, and really enjoyed being back on the trails in the beautiful Percy Warner Park.
At the end I completed the 4 x 100m stride outs on the main drive near the trail head. It felt weird to run strides in trail shoes, but I was still able to crank them out at a 6:35 average pace.
Beast Mode…ON!
Guinness Book of World Records recognizes surfer Garrett McNamara of Haleiwa, Hawaii for riding a 78-foot wave off the coast of Portugal in November 2011. I certainly don’t know the first thing about surfing, but this video just looks sick. I can’t imagine even being in the water with a wave that big much less trying to navigate a surfboard though it. Must Watch!
(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)