One assumes that after a race like Salida, it'll take a few days for your legs to come back to you. Hell, when I was younger, the thought of "training through" a marathon was unfathomable. It's good news then to feel that I have bounced back faster than I did after Austin. That's a testament to the evils of concrete if you ask me. Anyway, I was a bit conservative with throwing in more work and waited until Thursday to test out the engine.
Warmed up by climbing to the reservoir. Goal was 8 x 1000 @ marathon pace(6:15/mi) with 200 recovery. Instead of hammering this stuff out on the track - I'm a believer in avoiding the track unless you're racing on a track - I make a couple of modifications. 1)I do a loop on hardpack around one of the Stratton reservoirs. It's 1000-"ish". My garmin measures it out to be .60, so probably a few seconds short. 2)I do them on the 5:00 and don't worry about how far I run in between, but again my garmin suggests I'm doing about a 200 shag. 3)I only allow myself to check my garmin once during each repeat, as I like trying to work on 'feeling' the correct pace. It was extremely windy yesterday, so I expected variability, which I got: 3:40/3:36/3:46/3:38/3:41/3:38/3:44/3:36, HR between 150 and 158. Felt not great but good.
Going forward, I'm expecting to start feeling tired as I do work. I've managed to keep that pre-season feeling in the legs, but looking ahead, I think there's gonna be some real work to do. 8 days until my 36th birthday run, 5 weeks till Cheyenne Mtn, and 7 weeks till Collegiate Peaks.
Today is a staff development day, then we're off on Spring Break. Should be some solid training. New Rise Against came out on Tuesday...the whole album is still growing on me, but definitely a few good "get off your ass and do something about it" tracks on it.
Because of my job and family obligations, I am pretty much constrained to being as efficient as possible with where and when I run. I almost HAVE to run from my work. Driving 20 minutes to somewhere else cuts into that precious little time I allocate for my training. When that window is as narrow as 65-70 minutes, every second counts. But seriously, of all the locations to be constrained to, what better place than Gold Camp Elementary? Save Cheyenne Mountain High School, I can't think of a business in the city that's closer to such a robust set of trails, with Stratton Open Space in my backyard. I gotta post some pics.
Stratton trails were in great shape after a dusting of snow from yesterday. Tacky - good for riding. Warmed up to the rez and knocked off 6 1000's @ 6:15 pace. 1:00 recovery. I take data with a grain of salt. Case in point: my avg HR for these. Was between 154-156 for all of 'em. Well, my guess is that it took a good 60 sec to ramp my HR each time...otherwise, I'd be pretty stoked to hold 154's on 6:15's. :) My avg HR at Austin 13.1 was only 170 - as far as I can tell, many folks race that distance up closer to 180. Good, bad, indifferent, but my heart beats like I'm hibernating.
Kids are getting ready for the lovely state-mandated CSAP tests next week. I only started the test-specific prep this week. Drew on plenty of training analogies. We overemphasis writing plans now so that when it matters, it's no big deal. Write 7 paragraph essays so a 5 paragraph essay on a test is nothing. Do the work, see the results. Practice your ass off, and view the race/test as your reward, your chance to show off the hard work.
Sure to be overplayed if it already hasn't been in some places, I love their sound anyway.
