TRACK!
April 28, 2010 | 10:47 am
It's been a while since my last entry as there hasn't actually been all that much to report. Strangely enough, after bragging on my last entry about being injury free, I pulled my calf in what was to be the last hard workout before the Lung Run. I ended up taking about a week off, and needless to say, decided that 5K road race was not worth risking my season over. There are a few other options to choose from for my season debut, but I'm starting to lean towards a 3K at the Moonlight Meet at Saint Mary's on May 11th. I haven't raced a 3K since 2003, so it should be interesting.
A race? Really?
April 06, 2010 | 2:07 pm
Remember when I said I was going to update this every week? Yeah, so do I. I suppose it has been a while! My training has actually been going very well. I've had some really good tempo runs and a few decent interval workouts that would all indicate that I should be able to race fairly well by this summer. I've been in the Saucony Triumph 7s, and I couldn't be happier. I've been putting in a decent amount of volume, more than I have since the fall of 2006 (my last cross country season) and other than some tightness here and there, I have had no real pain.
Power Hills and the Drive for Five
March 15, 2010 | 2:22 pm
It's official. I'm a runner again. Two things happened in this past week haven't happened in years. First, I burnt a treadmill out. This is less of a reflection on my fitness and more so a reflection on the quality of certain treadmills, but it still happened. I've seen it happen a few times, if you've got the treadmill going close to 12 MPH on an incline the motor can burn out. It works just fine a few minutes later, but it just stops. This doesn't happen with newer treadmills. Well, maybe it does, but you have to be a lot faster than I am to make it happen.
The 'J Word'
March 08, 2010 | 2:53 pm
This past week was the heaviest week of training I've had in over a year. And I'm definitely paying the price today. Tuesday I did three sets of three 300s between 43 and 46 seconds. The third set was tough, but I managed to make my last rep my fastest. I would like to have been 42ish, but it just wasn't in the cards that day. Thursday was twenty minutes of tempo. I hate running at tempo pace; it's hard enough that it's not comfortable, but slow enough that you don't get that feeling of cutting through the air. It's just a death march.
Filling the unforgiving minute
March 01, 2010 | 11:28 am
Training has been going well. In fact, I'm actually a lot fitter than I was expecting to be at this point. The last three weeks have been highlighted by lots of tempo runs and a couple of track workouts that have gone surprisingly well. Last Tuesday in particular had me feeling pretty excited; the workout was 200m, 400m 600m, 400m, 200m and then a set of 4X200m. I ran 28.5, 60.0, 1:34, 58.5, 27.0 and then all the 200s were around 29.5. The workout itself actually felt great; but I still feel sloppy.
The Men-durance project. Revolution is in the air.
February 08, 2010 | 1:58 pm
I like to go off on tangents. You know, in case you hadn't noticed. So before I start rambling I'm going to get right into what my training week was like. I was on the track on Tuesday doing two sets of six 500s. I had 1:15 rest between reps and eight minutes between sets. Since it was my first real track workout, I went into it thinking I would try to run about 1:30. This would be 3 minute kilometer pace, which seemed realistic. Surprisingly, I had a bit more pop in my legs than I had anticipated and ended up running most of them between 1:24 and 1:27.
The View from the Infield
February 02, 2010 | 12:35 pm
I spent the weekend at the McGill Team Challenge. Six Dartmouth Athletics athletes were competing, two of which are still in high school and train with the club over the winter. It was strange being back on the McGill track; the CIS championships were hosted by McGill in 2007 and 2008. I don't think I've ever experienced so many conflicting emotions at a track meet. First of all, I was WAY more nervous for my athletes' races than I have ever been for my own. Secondly, watching the 4X800 was a thrill.
Bid me run...
January 25, 2010 | 2:15 pm
I was a lab rat yesterday. And it was actually pretty awesome. Aerobics First was sharing a booth with the New Balance guys at the Optimyz Live Show at the World Trade and Convention Centre. We had a treadmill, and after Daniel Crumback's very engaging presentation we decided we would do some testing on it. I was wearing a harness/heart rate monitor that was measuring how far I was leaning forward at certain speeds, what my heart rate was, and how deeply and frequently I was breathing. We also calculated my running cadence.
Once more unto the breach (for) dear friends.
January 18, 2010 | 10:57 am
Your body forgets how this stuff feels. Maybe because the thing is so uncomfortable, it's like a defense mechanism. The training week was highlighted by my first "real" workout since October 12, 2008. I put the goofy looking quotation marks around "real" because, although it certainly felt like a workout, it really should be a walk in the park; regardless of how long it's been. It was last Thursday. The workout was pretty simple; just a forty minute run with fifteen minutes of tempo, broken up into three five minute reps.
...Always a runner? (Rich's opening statements)
January 12, 2010 | 2:22 pm
I guess this is blog entry number one, so I'd better introduce the concept of this thing. From about fourteen to twenty-two years old I ran fairly competitively. The 800m was always my favourite event; I won the 800m at the 2003 Nova Scotia High School championships in a pretty deep year. After high school I ran five years in the CIS and won two national titles with the University of Victoria Vikes 4X800m relay team. After graduating, finding motivation to run was pretty tough for me. I "trained" for another year but the races just weren't happening.
