Running Around 4-17-06

Hopefully you had a chance to get out to the Sea Rays relays this weekend. If not, you missed some excellent runners. The invitational masters mile was a good race, and it was fun to watch guys that we train with and race against battling it out on the track.

We'll continue with I-pace/VO2max work. After 4 weeks of this stuff, your body should be beginning to adapt and feel comfortable running at this intensity. This phase is always the hardest for me, but after the 4th or 5th workout, I usually feel like I'm making some progress.

I had a special request for a hill workout this week. Since I think hill workouts are a good workout almost any time in the training cycle, I'll give you two workouts to choose from: hills or track.

Before I get to the workouts, here are some quick guidelines for I-paced workouts:

1. To get the most bang for the buck, the repeats should be right around 5 minutes in duration. You can probably push that to 5:15, but I wouldn't go any shorter than 4:30.

2. Rest is jogging. The time is equal to or less that the length of the I-paced running. If you're looking for a little tougher workout, cut the rest rather than increasing the intensity. You can also try progressively reducing the rest during a particular workout. For example, start with 4:00 rest and reduce it to 3:45, 3:30, etc. A variation on that is to reduce the rest over the length of the phase. So, in week 1, you would do all your repeats at 4:00 rest. By week 5 in the cycle, you might be down to 3:00.

3. Keep the volume at around 8% of your weekly mileage.

Now for the workouts ... Week #15 in the training cycle and 6 weeks to Expo:

1a. 3-6 x 1200m @I pace with equal TIME jog for rest. The rest will probably work out to be about 400m.
Volume: The I-paced running should be about 8% of your weekly mileage
Adjustments: If you cannot run 1200m at your pace in less than 5 minutes, run 1000m repeats instead.

1b. 6-12 x hills @R intensity. I gave a detailed description of the hill route and the warmup route back on 2/19. See http://trackworkouts.blogspot.com/ if you need a refresher. If you want a longer warmup, you can run the greenway out to Sequoyah Hills instead. That's about 2.8 miles. See the route here: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=50927

2. Striders TWO times this week. 6-8 x 100m

3. Optional second workout: 22 minutes continuous @T pace. If that's too strenuous, cut it in half an take 1:30 rest in between.

Get your paces here ... http://www.panix.com/%7Eelflord/vdot.html