Running Around 1-7-08

First of all thank you to everyone who contributed to my Christmas present!! That was a nice surprise. You are all very generous!

This week we'll try to shake off the rust and pick up the intensity a little bit with a progression run on the roads. The concept of a progression run is simple - go out easy and come back hard.

For this week, let's keep it unstructured. Pick a distance. Run the first half at your normal everyday training pace. Run the second half at a faster pace. Shoot for something around 30 secs/mile faster, but for this week, the particular pace is less important than simply maintaining a faster pace throughout the second half of the run. I'll recommend a distance of 8-10 miles, but pick something that works for your goals and current fitness level. 6 miles should be about the minimum. Follow up with some striders on the track.

Alternatively, you could run this on the track instead of the roads, but that might get boring running 6-10 miles on the track. If you really want a track fix, the old standby is listed below.

I've been hampered by a hamstring problem, so I'll be doing an easy run of 6 or 7 miles instead of the progression run.

Now for the workouts ...

1a. Progression run 6-10 miles.
-or-
1b. 3-4 x 1600m @T pace with 60 seconds rest.

2. Striders 4-6 x 100m.

Get your paces here: http://www.panix.com/%7Eelflord/vdot.html -or- http://www.runningforfitness.org/calc/rp.php