Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Pick-up Artist


So I have a new workout in this month's plan called a pick up. According to the experts (not me), these are kind of like a fartlek. It teaches you to change speeds frequently during the course of a run. It works on your anaerobic energy systems. It also pus some organaztion into a run that could turn out to be stale without the pickups. You can perform the pickups whenever you like during the run, but always make sure you've been running for a t least 5-10 minutes before you start. You decide when to do each pick up and when you've recovered you pick it up again.

Today's pick up workout was supposed to be 4 miles with 8 30 second pick ups. I did not follow the rules. I started my pick ups as instructed after 5 minutes of running and was done with the 8 by mile 2.5. As these are not supposed to be boring runs I decided to add in a couple more.

Overall pace for the 4 miles was 7:52, broken out as follows:

(Lap # = distance/pace/bpm)

Lap 1 = .5 mi/10:11/124
Lap 2 = .14 mi/6:23/124
Lap 3 = .17 mi/8:52/124
Lap 4 = 459 ft/6:27/165
Lap 5 = .11 mi/8:25/175
Lap 6 = 456 ft/6:00/177
Lap 7 = .2 mi/8:33/178
Lap 8 = 454 ft/6:04/177
Lap 9 = .11 mi/8:47/178
Lap 10 = 420 ft/6:14/179
Lap 11 = .13 mi/8:38/179
Lap 12 = 518 ft/6:00/179
Lap 13 = .14 mi/7:31/163
Lap 14 = 479 ft/6:25/177
Lap 15 = .18 mi/7:40/179
Lap 16 = 395 ft/6:47/177
Lap 17 = .21 mi/8:09/178
Lap 18 = 345 ft/6:04/178
Lap 19 = .52 mi/8:24/181
Lap 20 = .11 mi/4:41 (?)/183
Lap 21 = .8 mi/7:40/185

Total = 4 mi/7:52/169

(I think I failed to stop my Garmin during the warm-up so maybe my overall pace was in fact faster. I can tell you that I was not running 10:00 miles during my warm up, it was definitely faster - downhill and everything. But then there is that weird lap 20 that doesn't make sense. Whatever! I can't analyze this any further...)

I didn't do any fancy programming on the Garmin, so I decided to just hit the lap button each time I did a pick up and try to go exactly 30 seconds. Several times I went over 30 and a couple I went under. Oh well. My pick ups were supposed to be in Zone 7, 7:00/miles or faster and I definitely hit that.

I ended up finishing at the waterfront and decided to just walk the rest (half mile or so) back to my place. It was nice to just walk outside, I don't do that often enough. In fact, this was the 1st time I'd been out today.

Sun, Mon and Tuesday I took my vitamins. I also did TP on Sunday and am going to do it tonight (missed Monday) and did at least 15 minutes of stretching each day since Sunday. I guess it is not that hard to do.

Motivation pre-run has been lacking. My eating is not good - too much salty, snacky crap laying around. Some times it is harder to control this so I either have to try harder or just let it ride and know that it'll be better in a few days?

I have some good track workouts (scheduled for Thursdays) coming up. I am really excited to kick this shit into gear. I want to get the most out of it that I can. THAT MEANS RUN FAST!

4 comments:

Amy - the gazelle said...

awesome job - that sounds like a fun workout. I had yet another craptastic run tonight - I really just need a full-time massage therapist to keep my muscles all happy. I'm cross-training for the next two days, so hopefully Friday I'll be back into the running place again. :)

Aron said...

awesome job!!! the program i used included strides which are kind of like that... i think they are so fun! they make the miles fly by too :)

RunToTheFinish said...

ok I'm working to get faster, so I think I'm going to try something like this... i'm horrible at following plans

Alisa said...

That does sound fun. Man my knee needs to GET BETTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hope to meet up with you on the 17th!