Thursday, August 18, 2011

NYC Marathon Training Week #7: Wed & Thur

Whew! The week flew by so quickly. My girl is going back to school next week. I can't believe she's in 6th grade already. Hubs finally got his roster for the 12 and under girls' soccer team. I better hang on to my hat, the Fall season is going to be a busy one. I feel like if I blink I might miss something. Likewise, my NYC marathon training is passing way too fast. We're halfway through Week #7 and I haven't blog a word...here it goes....

Due to some unplanned event, I had to do some slight switcheroo. Monday and Tuesday became two full rest and recovery days. There was no way around that. I had to follow my doctor's orders. And I am happy to report that test results came back negative on the biopsy performed on Monday. Life is back to normal. Woo hoo!

I was given the green light to go back to my training on Wednesday. That was normally my interval day, but today's run was the 8 miles sorta-long-run. I ran it first thing in the morning since I've been itching to get out there. Two days of rest was enough to make me go crazy. At first step, the constant bouncing up and down hurt my sore spot. I started at 11:43 pace for the first half mile and increased the pace gradually. I did have two significant hills in this run which I am finally getting comfortable with. My splits were:

Mile 1 - 11:06
Mile 2 - 10:14
Mile 3 - 9:43
Mile 4 - 9:42
Mile 5 - 9:53 
Mile 6 - 9:46
Mile 7 - 9:39
Mile 8 - 8:31

As you may have already guessed, I ran yet another negative split. I ran the first four miles at 10:11 pace and the last four at 9:27 pace. That's 44 seconds faster in the second half. Lately I've been trying to hone my finishing kick, where I run either the last half to quarter mile at my best attempt at what you might call a sprint. I want to get used to feeling tired at the end of the run and still be able to push through the uncomfortable almost redlining effort to break through that finish line. I often visualize the last traffic light near my house as the last timing mat for NY. Yeah, kinda corny, but it works. So on this training run, my attempt at the last half mile was at 8:25 pace. What was funny was while I was pushing hard, I was thinking, "Boy, this sure feels like a 6:40 pace." The effort felt like so, but sadly, my Garmin brought me back to reality--Yes, turtle you were running at an incredible rate of speed. Nonetheless, I was happy with this outcome: 8 miles at 9:49 pace, 81% max HR effort + negative splits to boot! At 9:49 pace it feels like I have sweeter recovery time to move on to my hill work for Thursday!

Thursday - I was going to run at lunch to hit Lizzie Hill, sadly I forgot my shoes. Next best plan was to wait until after work and hit The Bay Oaks hill before dinnertime. I ran a 2 miler warm up at 9:52 pace 141 hr at 80% and then I ran my hill repeats.

1:25 0.18 mi @ 8:02 148 HR 84%
1:42 0.20 mi @ 8:36 150 HR 85%
1:21 0.16 mi @ 8:28 145 HR 82%
1:23 0.16 mi @ 8:39 155 HR 88%
1:22 0.16 mi @ 8:39 154 HR 88%
1:23 0.16 mi @ 8:48 157 HR 89%

You are probably asking, what's going on with the first two repeats? Why the difference in distance? I was fickle. At first I set my Garmin to do 2:00 repeats. But when I got over the crest, I still had 35 seconds left and no more hill to climb. So I restarted and decided I would do it by distance so I set it up for .20 mile or a 1/5 of a mile. I didn't like it. So finally I said I'm going to set it by time and hit it at 1:30. Surely I can climb it in one minute and a half. I was a bit more consistent with the minute and a half. I was getting tired by the last repeat.

After the repeats, I ran home for 1.61 mi @ 8:43 pace with 156 HR at 87%. Again, I worked on my finishing kick and tonight I just wanted to simulate the last tenth of a 5K. So for 46 seconds I ran for  0.11 mi @ 6:44 pace with 166 HR 94%. My perceived effort matched reality this time. I really was going at 6:44 pace. Imagine that. Happy with the results.

I am resting tomorrow yippee!  Happy running!

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