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What an awesome morning for a run! Can’t believe it was actually 49˚ at 5:45am this morning.
Our planned group run was a 10+ miler that included 4.5-miles through the streets of Belle Meade and then the 5.8-mile loop in Percy Warner Park. My schedule from John called for 14 to 16 miles at easy pace with a few quicker miles in middle.
To keep from having to run all of the extra at the end I started a bit early and got in just over 1.5-miles before starting with the group. During this short warm up, and the group run through Belle Meade, I just never felt comfortable. My legs felt heavy and I couldn’t find a good rhythm. Once we got back to the entrance of Percy Warner we made a very brief fluid stop and then headed onto the 5.8.
Even though it is short, the 5.8 is quite challenging with well over 1,000 ft. of total elevation gain. Since I had not been feeling great up to this point I was a little apprehensive about how things would go during this section. However, once we started the first climb I started feeling a lot better.
Not hard to tell where we entered the park!
Since I was feeling better, and my schedule called for some quicker miles in the middle, I picked up the pace a bit beginning in mile 8. Prior to this point my average was somewhere around 8:50, but my splits dropped to 8:02, 8:36 (BIG Hill), 7:52, 7:51, and 7:43 for miles 8 through 12. Near the end of the 5.8-mile loop I took a bit of a detour to add a little extra mileage in the park so I wouldn’t have as much extra to do in Belle Meade after getting back to the main gates.
Once I got back into Belle Meade my legs were feeling heavy again so I decided not to try and push up to the top end of my scheduled range. At the gates I was just over 12-miles so I ran a couple of easy cool down miles in Belle Meade to finish with 14.3 total miles.
On a side note, we have a new guy named Rob that has been running with our group for the past few weeks and is obviously very fast. Today I got to spend some time talking to him and asked him about his lifetime PRs. His half marathon PR is 1:06, and his full marathon PR is 2:27 (Won Rocket City Marathon in Huntsville)!!! WOW! It is very cool to be able to run with someone of that caliber. He was very encouraging to me about my Quest for Boston, and even told me that thinks I’ve got the ability to go well below 3 hours. Not sure that I have that level of confidence in myself quite yet, but it is always nice to hear that type of encouragement.
Anyway, it was a good morning and a good run with the group!
Beast Mode….ON!
Those who have followed my blog for a while know that I’m a big Saucony fan. Earlier today Running Warehouse posted an entry on their blog about a new lightweight trainer coming from Saucony in early 2013, that will be called the Virrata. Per the post It will be …
(1) Zero drop from heel to toe with only 18mm of material in the outsole.
(2) 6.5 oz for men’s size 9
(3) Very flexible due to deep grooves in the outsole (think Nike Free)
Even though I’m pretty content with the Kinvara as my everyday, lightweight trainer, the Virrata is kind of intriguing to me. Since I’m trying to become more of a mid-foot striker, the zero-drop design is appealing. Also, it will be a full ounce lighter than the Kinvara, and actually looks a LOT more like the original Kinvara than the current Kinvara 3 (Notice the laces and the the upper). Doesn’t look like it will be able to match the Kinvara in the style department, but might be worth taking a look next spring.
What do you think?
Tonight’s track workout was long and TOUGH. With a storm front bearing down on Nashville, we started everything a few minutes early. Also, even though the temps were slightly lower than the 90 degrees we faced last week, the humidity was NASTY! Here’s a rundown of the night…
- 2-Mile Warmup
- 6 x 100m Stride Outs
- 800m f (300m Recovery)
- 2 x 400m g (200m / 400m Recovery)
- 600m f (300m Recovery)
- 2 x 400m g (200m / 400m Recovery)
- 800m f (300m Recovery)
- Two Laps of Straights & Curves
- 1/2-Mile Cool Down
After our first 800m interval, John broke us up into two groups with Nathan, Sue Anne, and I taking the lead. Both of them were just a hair faster than me tonight, but it was nice to have someone to run with after basically running solo last week. All three of us were struggling with the humidity, especially for me during the 600m interval and the final 800m were my heart rate went above 190.
Even though the humidity was awful, I still managed to crank out fairly consistent splits throughout. My beginning and ending 800m intervals were 2:57 and 2:55 respectively. My four 400m repeats were 1:24, 1:21, 1:21, and 1:21.
The total for the night was 7.2-miles completed with warmup and cool down, and 4.3-miles of this was the actual workout. This is a fairly long workout for our group, and I really felt it at times tonight. However, even though it was a hard one, it was a very good workout. At the end Nathan commented about how this was the type of workout where it would have been easy to quit if you were by yourself. It is really awesome to have the camaraderie and accountability that come from running with our awesome group!
Beast Mode…ON!*
*John said this to me tonight about halfway through the workout with a fist-bump, and I really needed it 🙂