April 04, 2006

The guy who heads up the track club here is an incredibly nice and generous person. He's one of those people who significantly improves the quality of life here in the Magic City for many people. Last fall, I hooked up with the 10K to Half running group midway through the training season after deciding to run the Mercedes Half, and he sent the group lots of encouraging and funny emails about our training runs. Each weekend, I ran my weekly long runs with the group. That was always social and fun, even in bitterly cold temperatures.

So, I emailed him this week and asked him to provide suggestions for speedwork. I typed up the list below from his email. He reminded me to take every fourth week off, or cut one workout in half that week in order to cut back and recover.

My goal is to do speedwork once a week this summer, most likely on Monday evenings, and when the weather gets hot, I'll have to get up early on Monday mornings. Ugh.

• Week 1 & 2: Two min fast, two min slow, times 4-6
• Week 3: 1/4 mile pace at 1:45-1:55, times 6 with 1/4 mile recovery
• Week 4: times 7
• Week 5: times 8
• Week 6: times 9
• Week 7: times 10
• Week 8: 1/4 mile pace at 1:45-1:55, times 6 with 1/8 mile recovery

And so on, with eventual increase to 1/2 mile intervals.

Ow. OW. OUCH OUCH OUCH. I did speedwork last night: four 1:45s with 2 minute recoveries. That hurt. That was the first 2.5 miles of my run (after a warm-up mile). Then I ran the last 2.5 at an increasingly faster pace, getting stronger by the end. Actually, I was wanting to quit, so the faster I finished, the earlier I could stop running.