Running Around 3-29-10

We'll have a few options this week. I don't know about anyone else, but my legs are feeling the effects of yesterday's race. It takes some time to recover from longer races, so option #1 this week is just an easy road run to allow the legs to get back to normal. If you're feeling better by the end of the week, then you can do one of the other options later in the week.

In any case, let's try to get some striders in on Tuesday. They're great for working out the kinks and breaking out of the slow, recovery shuffle mode.

I usually stick to the technical workout details, but this week I want to share an important tip about the mental part of racing ... The past couple years I've realized that everything doesn't have to be perfect to have a fast race or set a PR. For a long time, I worried about how much sleep I got, what & when I ate, whether I was tight or had a little soreness somewhere, or missed a training day, or had a bad workout that week, or didn't drink enough, or started my warmup too early or too late, or the weather was too hot, too cold, too wet, too windy.

Well, guess what? I quit worrying about it, and I started racing better. There are too many things you can't control. Don't let the imperfection of all of those other factors bother you. Sometimes good enough is good enough. Think about the things you can control: effort and concentration during the race.

Week 11 of Spring 2010 training. Now for the workout summary:

1a. Easy road run 6-10 miles. Easy pace to facilitate recovery from racing this weekend. Followed by striders.

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1b. 3-6 x 1600m @T pace w/60 rest. If you choose not to do a road run, this is the a lower impact workout that can be done shortly after a hard effort like a long race.

2. Striders at least once this week 4-6x 100m.

3. [Optional 2nd weekly workout Thurs/Fri] : 3-8 x 1200m @I pace w/200m jog recovery. Rest should be 3-5 minutes not to exceed your interval time. Volume should be 7-8% of weekly mileage for the hard running. Run 1000m repeats if you cannot complete 1200m in less than 5 minutes.

Use a recent race to get your training paces here:
http://www.panix.com/%7Eelflord/vdot.html
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http://www.runningforfitness.org/calc/rp.php