Saturday, March 21, 2009

Mini Tri & Tempo

Man, I have been bad about posting this week. Work has been busy, then I had a co-worker/friend in town on Thursday and my sister and niece flew in from Boston on Friday and are here til next Thursday. Lots of action! Here is my recap:

Thursday:

I was supposed to do a swim+bike workout. Swim for 750 yards @ steady state, then get out and jump on a bike quickly to do an hour of steady state ride in zone 1 or 2. My co-worker/friend came down from Seattle with her b/f for the weekend so we worked together from my apt all day then she bought a day pass at my gym. When I used to live in Seattle we'd occasionally workout together and always had fun. Anyway, I jumped in the pool and eeked out a quick 800 meters (or yards, or whatever), then changed and went to spin class. Of course the spin class is way more of a workout than Z1-2 but I like it and I did it. So there! After that I was feeling so good I wanted to see what running would feel like - so I convinced my friend to get on the treadmill next to me for a mile. I started the pace off really slow because I thought it would feel hard, but it didn't so I kept accelerating until the end when I was under a 7:00 pace. The whole mile was 8:40 and felt great. So, I did a little mini triathlon this week - sweet!

Swim = 800 m/14:00ish?
Bike = 1 hour spin class
Run = 1 mile/8:40

After the gym we went out for dinner and drinks and ended up meeting up with her b/f, my b/f and others and staying out waaay too late drinking too many drinks. It was heaps o fun.

Friday:

Had this been 10 years ago I would have woken up, flicked the lint off my shoulder and gone out to do it again. Fast-forward to my current over the hill state and I'm a goner. Friday morning was painful - I was tired, headachy, forgetful and overall quite dysfunctional. I was supposed to do weight training (which is coincidentally called my "off" day - there is nothing OFF about doing weight training, mister coach man). But guess what. I didn't. I had to work from an actual office that day and had my sister arriving at 4:30 so I didn't make it a priority in my schedule. And I'm okay with that.

Saturday:

Woke up early to work today - moving an office from one part of the city to another. Luckily it was a small move and not too stressful or lengthy. But I worked about 5 hours and any work on the weekend technically sucks in my book. My sister was with another friend for the night and I had an invite to go to the NCAA regional games so I spent 5 hours watching hoops and eating crap! I sort of "forgot" that I had a 6 mile tempo run but when I got home at 8 p.m. I guilted myself into doing it. I'd already missed my Monday 5 miler and am going to have to struggle to cram in 11 miles tomorrow that I figured I couldn't miss this.

This is the latest I've done a run in forever and it kinda sucked. Running late means you've had all day to put crap into your body which means that there's, well, more crap in your body. I had yet another really close call on this run! That's all you need to hear.

I didn't realize until 5 minutes before I left that this run was going to be harder than my past tempo runs: 1.5 warm up/3 miles @ 7:30/1.5 mile cool down. My past tempos only had TWO miles of speed and now I'm going to THREE? Hot.

Mile 1.5 = 13:10/8:46 pace/135 bpm

Tempo Mile 1 = 7:18/168 bpm
Tempo Mile 2 = 7:29/174 bpm
Tempo Mile 3 = 7:22/178 bpm
Tempo Mile 3.1 = 0:44/180 bpm
TOTAL TEMPO = 3.1 miles/5k/22:51/7:22 pace/173 bpm

Mile 1.4 = 14:40/9:41/155 bpm

I decided to make the tempo a 5k to measure it out compared to the race and future races. This was a hard tempo but it felt all right. It was hard running at this time of day and the lack of good food and water in my body. (Today I ate a spinach/feta breakfast wrap from Sbux, tons of Tim's Cascade potato chips [Johnny's Seasoning Salt flavor], a huge soft serve waffle cone, soft pretzel+cheese plus a diet coke. I consumed little to no water. All of this is totally atypical and gross.)

Anyway, I feel good that I was still able to break my goal of 23:00 in the 5k! I didn't really set out to do that, I just wanted to run 7:30s or better. I am excited that these tempos are becoming more challenging. I'm starting to think more about what I want to start doing in races long term and it is exciting. After last week's race I think I've got a lot ahead of me that I want to shoot for and I'm starting to believe that it is possible. Yikes!

Tomorrow is 11 miles in Z3. I have a lot planned for the day so am going to do it first thing in the a.m. I hope I actually do it.

Hope your wknds are going well!

2 comments:

KK said...

Wow, you have been insanely productive for a) having friends in town and b) having to work on the weekend. Nice job! And way to rock out that tempo run, those are super fast splits, esp for being fueled with carnival food!
LOL at the flicking the lint off your shoulder and doing it all over again. so true!

Alisa said...

Great job on the tempo run. My bed time is usually 9pm so I would not have been able to get out there...way to convince yourself to go!

It's always so fun to run into you on the long run days. Justin said you were speeding by when he saw you. 11 miles speedily is impressive!