Monthly Archives: July 2014

07.04.14
by

Welcome to the second half of the year…

Happy Independence Day!

I’ll have a full recap of my fourth of July race up shortly, but for now I just want to map out what the rest of the year looks like for me running-wise:

  • July: training for the Smyrna Parks 5k at the beginning of August
  • August: training for the Franklin Classic 10k at the beginning of September
  • September through mid-October: starting low heart rate training to develop a strong aerobic base for half marathon training
  • mid-October through mid-November: 33 day running streak planned while continuing low heart rate training
  • mid-November through December: training starts for half marathons #3 and #4!

And just for fun, here’s my negative splits from the easy five miler I did on Wednesday. I wasn’t actually trying to get negative splits; I just have a tendency to run that way. If you had asked me what I thought my splits would be before I looked at my stats, I would have said the third mile would be the fastest, since there was a huge downhill, and no way that mile four with its uphills would be faster.
negative splits!

07.02.14
by

5/6/7/5 Treadmill Workout

To gear up for Friday’s race, I decided to do some speed work on the treadmill on Monday. (The heat index was over 100. There’s no way I could have done this outside with the same results.)

I decided to do a workout consisting of a quarter mile at 5.0 (easy pace), quarter mile at 6.0 (around current 5k pace), quarter mile at 7.0 (the speed work), and a final quarter at 5.0, repeated three times for a total of three miles.

I also did a final quarter mile where I started at 7.0 for a minute and then progressively lowered my speed to ease into a cool down period.

Here’s what the pace graph for such a workout looks like:

5/6/7/5 Treadmill Workout

I added lines as mile markers, so you can see where the next set started.

My average pace was around 10:15 min/mi, which is the first time I’ve seen an average starting with a 10 since April, and the first I’ve seen below 10:20 since March. Yay, my knee issues didn’t completely break me!

I ran the 5k distance in around 31:44, or just 20 seconds shy of the 5k I ran in March. The second fastest 5k distance I’ve ran!

I plan on taking it easy on my Wednesday run to rest up for Friday. I don’t plan on trying to break that 30 minute barrier just yet, but I’m still going to give it my all!