Training Log - Friday, August 3, 2012

I met up with James and Richard for a nice road 10 miler starting at Pratt Ave and up Drake Ave and back. While the temps weren't quite as hot as in recent days, the humidity levels continue to be extremely high. We kept an easy pace, which was just fine with me after a couple of harder runs the day before. I continued to keep my training focus on mileage and training effort. While we aren't really running a hard pace, we are always making sure that there are some serious climbs or hills involved. I also continue to do hard efforts during the weekly cross country runs and the speed workouts. Overall, I believe the quality of my training has increased over previous training cycles. Hopefully, this will show in my performance during the next big event.

Training Log - Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Hill repeats, yay! Well, that's what I told myself when the alarm went off at 4:30AM this morning. Anything to get up and motivated, right? I met Richard, James and Ed at the old Randolph School on Drake Ave. We did a 1 mile warm up to the bottom of the nice hill at the end of Drake Ave (towards the mountain) before starting our 10 hill repeats. We did eight 2 minute hill repeats followed by 3 minute recovery jogs back down   the hill before continuing further uphill after the eighth hill repeat to do two more repeats at the last and steepest road section on Drake. While this one is shorter than 2 minutes, it certainly is steep enough to make grown men weep...especially when you've already done 8 repeats. We finished out the workout by looping around for another 1.5 miles for our cool down to finish our run back at Randolph. I am glad I dd it, but I am also glad I dont have another workout scheduled for the next 36 hours:-)

Training Log - Wednesday, June 20, 2012 (Part 1)

Hill workout! James suggested to change things up a bit today, so Ed, James and I met up at the old Randolph School parking lot to head about a mile down the street on Drake Ave towards the mountain, where we started to run 10x 2 minute hill repeats with 3 minute recoveries, slowly working our way up the entire section until we ended up on the last and steepest section of Drake Ave for our final two repeats. We continued on to complete a 1.5 mile cool down run before arriving back at the school parking lot. These repeats felt tougher and I was sure that the elevation gain was significantly more than our usual Cotton Row hill repeats, but I was wrong. We only climbed an additional 100 feet (total of just over 1000 feet) vs. "puke hill". The weather was just right, not too hot with a little breeze. By the way, maybe it was the lack of oxygen in my lungs after the 6th or 7th repeat, but I could have sworn I saw Eric Charette walking one of his dogs. Shout out to you, if it was indeed you, buddy! If it wasn't you, my apologies to the person I yelled and waved at, instead;-)