Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
Speed Kills
Oh c’mon now – surely I’m not the only living person on the
planet who grew up watching WKRP in
Cincinnati?! Every weekday, after
school. One of the most brilliant
sit-coms ever. EVER!
And The Hold Up? In which Dr. Johnny Fever DJ’s live from Del’s
Stereo and Sound? And, in response to
Del’s over-caffeinated speed rant, Dr. Johnny Fever deadpans, “Uh-huh. Speed
kills, Del,”? Pure awesomeness.
Haven’t seen it?
Then, click below and watch, then come back. I’ll wait…
My second-favorite* episode.
EVER.
What on earth does this have to do with running? Let me tell
you… speed does kill, Del. Or at least it can kill a training plan.
I had a speed workout planned for this past weekend. 6 x 800-meter repeats at a 10:30/mile
pace. It was a nice morning, for
West-Central Florida, (meaning that the humidty was only 99% and the temp was
actually BELOW 80! I almost grabbed a parka. almost.), and I was feeling all sorts of badass after a little ½ mile
warm-up. So I fired it up and rolled off
the first 800m at a 10:22 pace. Nailed a
second 800m at 10:11. Slowed down a tad
to run the third 800m at 10:37. And then
felt the full force of the sun and wound up running the 4th 800m at
11:18.
But I still felt strong, and that last slower lap left me
feeling recovered enough to push the next 800m.
So I did. Push. Against the
pavement. With my right foot. And then stopped. With an audible, “WTF?!” My knee hurt.
A lot. On the outside. And it wasn’t
my bad, ITBS-ridden left leg. Oh
no. It was the right leg – the good leg.
GAH!
Long story short, I tweaked a bunch of stuff that connects
to the top of my fibula, stretched my LCL and hamstring tendon a bit more than
they like to be stretched. The Miracle Worker (my chiropractor) did some
chiro-magic to reduce the swelling and promote healing and told me not to run
for a week. And then, when I do run
again, to slow down some.
Speed kills, V.
Luckily, I have plenty of time before any long race and I've already hit 10 miles in training, so I'm not too worried. And really, it's so blasted hot down here, I'm quite okay with taking a week off. So there.
*My absolute favorite
episode is, of course, the 1978 classic, Turkeys
Away. Priceless.
Thursday, August 8, 2013
The Need for Speed
"I feel the need... the need for speed!" |
If you are of a certain age – and I am – you don’t just know
this quote and its context. Oh no. You’ve repeated it a few hundred dozen
times. You’ve performed the accompanying
‘round-the-world-over-the-shoulder high five.
You’ve also referred to your good buddy as your “wingman.” And, chances are, you can sing every word of You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling.” You know – with feeling.
I digress.
I’ve been feeling the
need for speed, now that my stupid IT Band seems to more or less have accepted
that it’s going to run, whether it likes it or not. Thanks to my piss-poor lungs, I’ll probably never
be a fast runner, but I’d sure like
to be faster. So my training plan for the Tower of Terror10-Miler and Halloween Halfathon includes some speed training stints on my
non-long run weeks. And I got started on
them recently.
First up was a session taken straight from Jeff Galloway’s Time
Improvement plan for the runDisney Tower of Terror 10-Miler: run 800 meters
at a pace 15 seconds faster than race goal pace, walk 3 minutes to recover,
repeat for a total of four times. Now,
as I’ve mentioned before, I am a sprinter by nature. Not a super fast sprinter, mind you, but a
sprinter – I love to run at top speed for short stretches. Distance training has been sort of a downer
in that regard; I’ve been so busy building base mileage and nursing injuries, I
haven’t had an opportunity to go fast in over a year. So I was pretty psyched to tackle my first
speed training task.
I have this awesome little outdoor, paved track near
home. It circles a pretty lake
surrounded by trees, so much of the track is shaded – a huge plus this time of
year in Florida. I took a trip around to
warm up properly and started in. I’d set
up my Runkeeper iPhone app to four interval sets of 800 meters followed by
three minutes walking and wore my Garmin 10 to pause during recoveries and
check my pace on the fly.
So how’d it go?
No, no – I’ll tell you… it was GREAT!!! Really amazing. I don’t know when I’ve felt better in a
run. Forget 15 seconds faster than my
12:00/mile goal pace – I ran 800 meter splits of 11:05, 10:33, 10:44 and
10:42. Up to a whopping 1:27 under goal
pace! Pretty comfortably, too; I really
felt like I could’ve pushed harder, but didn’t want to invite problems
unnecessarily.
Two weeks later, it was time for hill repeats. Now, if you’ve followed my blog for a while, or if you live in the southern half of Florida, you know that there is a distinct lack of hills in the area. But here in coastal Florida, we have many bridges connecting the mainland with our barrier islands. Since my knee had been acting up the previous week, I opted for the lower of the two bridges near me and vowed to kill it.
I started out on the flat beach road, turning in a mile
warm-up before getting to the bridge. I
then ran up, walked down the other side, turned around and repeated that the
other direction. Twice, for a total of
four ascents and descents. Going up a
fifth time, the bells began to ring, alerting all that the draw bridge was
being raised to allow a sailboat to pass underneath. I took
it as some weird sign to pick up the pace and beat a couple of teenaged girls
to the top before turning around. And I
did. Pass them.
Once more I ascended and turned around, then finished with
an easy, flat mile for recovery.
I must say that I’m loving
these speed workouts! Which is really
making me think about next year’s race schedule… perhaps a bit less distance
and more 5Ks? We’ll see. For now…
Wednesday, August 7, 2013
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