Tuesday 9.18.12

I received the plan for the week from Jeff.  Another build week with a promise of a recovery week next week.  Seems like every week is a build week.  The goal is one more hard week, a recovery week, one more build cycle before the taper to the race.  The track run was longer distance intervals today.  After my warm up, which was a mile and a half run to the track, I was to do: 5k mile, 400 recovery jog, (2) 10k miles, 400 recovery jog, 5k mile, 400 recovery jog, cool down run on the way home.  I still felt a little fatigued from the long Sunday run but my times were not bad.  When I got to the track, I hit the start/stop button on my garmin instead of the lap button.  Running in the dark can get you confused.  The first 250 yards are MIA on my GPS.  I feel the time was fairly consistent with the rest of the mile.  I should have been on a 8:10 pace for the 5k mile.  The first 3 laps flowed easily but the last lap was a little bit of a struggle.  Jeff was at the track and lapped me while doing my 8:10 mile.  He didn't even look like he was trying hard.  After the 400 recovery jog, I fired up the two 10k miles.  Settled into a decent pace for the first 6 laps but the last two were tough to maintain pace.  The times were a little fast at 8:38 and 8:44.  I may have been going too fast actually.  The 5k miles should be close to 8 minutes but the 10k miles should probably be closer to 9 minutes.  After the 10k miles, I ate a honey stinger gel and grabbed a quick drink of water.  Ran the 400 recovery jog and then started on the last 5k mile.  Through 2 laps I was at 8:27 pace, which was too slow.  I really pushed the last two laps and finished in 8:06.  I probably ran the last two laps (1/2 mile) at 7:45 pace.  That was really tough.  Drank some more water and then started the jog back home.  I walked for the first tenth or two to recover but probably ran a 10 minute recovery pace.  Covered about 7.5 miles today in about 71 minutes.  Even though I didn't feel great, my times were pretty good.  I was looking back through this blog and my times in July were all in the 9+ minute range at less distance.  It's nice to see some improvement.  One of the nice things about the blog is the ability to look back at how far I have come.  Another bonus today, after the run, I weighed 169.8 on the scale.  Granted, there is some water weight loss, but the numbers did dip below 170 for the first time.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/224221048