Workouts

I started this month off doing two workouts in one week.  That may not sound like much but I rarely do workouts and even when I do it may only be one or two a MONTH.  With the USATF masters road mile championships later this month I felt a pressing need to work on leg-turnover.  The few workouts I’ve done over the last few years typically are either 2-4 miles of “tempo” work or 1-2 miles of shorter interval work.  On Monday I chose to do some shorter faster stuff getting in 6 x ¼ mile with ¼ mile rest.  I did this on the road and relied on Garmin to give me ¼ splits.  The result was a mixed bag with splits all over the place depending on Garmin accuracy, terrain, and wind.  It didn’t matter much since the goal was to just get moving at whatever felt quick.  I took an easy day on Tuesday and was back at it on Wednesday.  This time I was really stepping out of my comfort zone with a workout planned for 6:30 p.m.  My reasoning for this was the mile champs will be at 6:15 p.m. and I’m usually asleep by 7, so I better do a few runs to get used to running so LATE in the day.  Jim Pawlicki had suggested the Notch 5k in Salem as there are usually people running at pretty much any pace.  I met up with Jim for a course preview warm-up and then headed over with about 30 others to the “line”.  Many were just jogging through as they do their weekly speed prior to this event.  Conditions were perfect with temps around 50 and no wind.  I was hoping to run under 6:20 pace and thought 6:10’s might be in the cards but it is so hard to tell with running so late (and already having 15 miles done).  I was pleasantly surprise to see I was 2:58 for the first ½ mile.  One guy was out in front and two others were right behind me.  As we gained a little (16’) in the next half mile the two guys went by.  It was great to have someone to work with as I hit the mile in 6:05.  We had a nice drop down to Bayview road and I hit 1.5 in 9:09.  One guy dropped back as the other two hammered the 30’ climb by the Salem Willows.  I hung on as best I could and was very happy to hit 2 miles 12:07.  The two guys pulled ahead as they continued to chat, but maybe a little less chatter as the pace increased.  I hit 3 miles in 18:06 and kept it going as best I could for the long 5k (I got 3.18) in 19:11.  It was definitely a good effort for that time of day and I’m hopeful I can improve on that next time.

Jim Pawlicki finished fixing the front of my car...