Getting Back up to Speed

Well I am slowly getting there, not as fast as I'd like but in reality I may be running at least as fast as I was pre-marathon in October. It's still not good enough for me and thats the frustrating part. People I trained with then that were slower than I am now are much faster. Just shows how 2 months off can affect you. Coach Dennis keeps telling me to be patient that as we get older it takes us longer to come back from injury or sickness. I believe that.

Sunday I had a good run I suppose. Annette and I met with another group of cruisers that were running at 1:30pm. The weather was nice for a change, low 50's so it was shorts and t-shirt weather. I needed 10 plus and that was pretty much what everyone wanted to run. We had 8 people running, Brenda, Jackie, Rock, Robert, Kelly, Rick, Annette and myself. As usual we started off way too fast with Brenda, Jackie, Rock and Robert taking off and the rest of us pretty much running in a 4 person pack. We made the Candlewood loop as we call it and then headed down Mt Carmel towards Dogwood. At about 3.5 miles Rick and Kelly went ahead. I was trying to keep up with Annette but she was just so speedy. She would slow down and turn back to me every now and then. I was still running a good pace I thought. I would check my garmin and i'd be running a mid to upper 9 minute pace. This was on the hills too. After about 5 miles I did start to wear down some and had to take some walk breaks here and there. After turning on Dogwood we headed back down Mt Tabor to finish on 89 to the school.

When we hit the school, we had exactly 10 miles recorded. After doing the 6 miles plus on Saturday, this felt almost like a tempo run but it wasn't. I actually ran the 10 miles at just a little faster pace than I did the 6 plus miler on Saturday so I was happy with that.

Here were my stats:
Total miles - 10.0
Average pace - 10:44
1-9:41
2-10:07
3-10:32
4-10:53
5-10:35
6-11:02
7-11:01
8-11:11
9-11:20
10-11:00
1334 calories


Tuesday Night Clinic

Last night was the freezing Tuesday night running clinic. This was suppose to be a tempo run. The plan called for this:

Intermediates:
1.5 mile warm up
4 x strides
15 minute tempo
4 x strides
1 mile cool down

Advanced:
2 mile warm up
4 x strides
20 minute tempo
4 x strides
1 mile cool down

When we got there the temp was about 30 degrees with about a 15 mph wind. Boy was it cold! I think the warm up run was almost at tempo pace, at least the first mile. After doing my warm up and strides I had just over 2 miles complete. Then it was off for the tempo run. Annette, Bailey, Kelly and myself all started out together but that quickly ended as Annette and Bailey took off. Our first 200 was probably at an 8:35 pace so I tried to slow down. The goal is to run at your LT pace, not faster so that your body learns how to burn lactate acid. Kelly stuck with me pretty much the whole time. When we would turn north we would have a very powerful head wind which really made things not as fun. It was cold running into the wind and then when you were out of it it would be too warm. I probably had too many clothes on but I wasn't cold at least. Technically I was still an intermediate but I had actually planned on doing the advanced tempo run. When I saw the 15 minute intermediate time coming up I decided I'd be an intermediate and stopped. I was happy with the fact that I hit my old LT/tempo pace and held it. I should have done the full advanced but I just didn't feel it. Maybe next time. As cold as it was I was glad to get it done.

Here were the stats:
Total miles - 4.72
Average pace - 10:37
2.01 warm up - avg. pace 10:46
1.57 tempo - 9:43 pace
I didn't have the cool down handy but it was around a 10:57 pace I think.