Well, it’s been four weeks since Dan and I wrapped up our indoor track workouts and the time is right to start back doing some sort of speed work.
The plan for yesterday was to hit the Phillips Andover track and do 5 times 1KM with 600 meters rest. The howling wind had me wondering if this would be a good idea. When I met up with Dan he casually threw out that maybe it wasn’t the best day to hit the track. I heartily agreed and suggested we do an equivalent workout on the trails. I’m not a big fan of doing workouts off of the track, I like the feedback the track gives you and the certainty of running exact distances. Dan enjoys doing more unstructured workouts (repeat 1 minutes or repeat 2 minutes), whereas I have only done a handful of these type of workouts over the years.
So we settled on doing 5 times 3 minutes with 3 minutes rest and we chose the Moncrieff Cochran Bird Sanctuary as the place to run. The surface is pretty even with very few roots or rocks and the terrain is challenging. You are always either climbing or descending, there is little flat ground.
We ran over as a warm-up (17:10), then headed into the loop doing our 5 repeats and 5 rests whenever the watch beeped. It is definitely a harder workout mentally as you really don’t know how hard you are working or how much time you have left. Dan was very strong, especially on the up-hills which are my weakness. The third and fourth repeat felt like an all-out sprint to me! After our 30 minutes in the sanctuary we finished out the loop we were on and ran back. At the end we added on a loop in the cemetery to come out close to a ten mile run (70:01).
It felt good to start back again and I’m looking forward to hitting the track and working on some speed. Only 7 weeks until the next Grand Prix race!
2 comments:
I almost spit out my morning beverage when you said the uphills "are my weakness." If the uphills are a weakness for a Mt. Washington champ - one of the greatest Mt. Washington competitors of all time - then how shall I describe myself on uphills? Snail-like? Glacier-ish? Backward-y?
I hope you meant "compared to Dan" or "During speed work" but even that ... Dude, you are a badass on hills!
I'm serious. I'm not good at hills. Mountains are a whole other thing. I'm very good at going slowly and grinding it out, but pushing over a hill or changing gears over rolling terrain has never been a strong suit for me. I'm also a terrible descender.
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