Today was another great marathon workout put together by the illustrious Dan Ashmead. These bi-weekly workouts have become a staple of our group, and have really kicked my training up a few notches over the past 2+ years. We switch between interval marathon workouts and long easy runs on alternating weekends.
Today’s workout was in Percy Warner Park, and featured plenty of hills. As with my workouts earlier this year, I tried to push them much faster than goal marathon pace (7:26) in my never-ending quest to increase overall speed. The workout contained approximately 8-miles of marathon pace (or sub) intervals with hill repeats directly in the middle. The hill repeats are designed to rapidly tire out your legs, simulating the feeling at the end of a marathon for the remainder of the workout. The following is what we did today along with my splits:
- 15-minute warmup
- 2-miles at goal marathon pace (13:57)
- 1-mile under goal marathon pace (6:38)
- 1-mile under goal marathon pace (6:41)
- 4 x 30 sec hill repeats
- 2-miles at goal marathon pace (13:59)
- 1.9-miles at goal marathon pace (13:15 – 6:58 pace)
- 1.75-mile cooldown
Earlier this week I posted about my frustration with recent tempo runs not exactly being up to pace. Well today everything felt like it came together. All of my intervals were completed at sub 7:00 min pace, and I was able to maintain my consistency through to the end. All morning I felt like I had an extra gear that had been missing the last couple of weeks.
This morning also featured a humorous barrage of “constructive” criticism thrown my direction. During our second interval (1-mile), I heard the following within a few seconds of each other:
- Dan Ashmead – “Tim, you’re starting this one off too fast.”
- Marc Dedman – “Tim, you need to work harder on running the tangents.”
- Paul Scalisi – “Tim, you need to get up on your toes more.”
Feeling like this clearly wasn’t enough, I asked John Thorpe if he had anything else to offer. He smiled and responded with “You look really silly in those clothes.”
We all had a good laugh about this later in the run. I really love our group!