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Week 2
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What a nice set of responses during the first week of the new format. Quite a diverse range of histories, with a lot of ups and downs along the road. Clearly there is much experience within this group that we can all draw from.
As per usual, I'll cue you in on my week (hoping that you will do the same) and offer up some topic for discussion. Don't feel the need to be confined to my topic, as this is truly meant to be a forum by and for everyone (and if someone wants to get the ball rolling before I get to it, great!)
My week started out in Arizona, where I ran fairly easy 5-8 mile runs Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. From Sunday evening until Tuesday we stayed in a "cabin" outside of Flagstaff, so M,T runs were run on a slant at 6700 feet (I guess that will constitute my altitude training for the year :-)...). Tuesday night, we took the red-eye home, so I was pretty tired Wednesday, as well, so more easy miles. Thursday, I did 8 miles of Fartlek, where I worked every uphill (ranging from 15s to 90s) hard, while trying not to take it too easy in between, averaging just under 7-minute pace. Friday was another easy run, and I rounded out the week with 12-mile modestly-progressive run stepping down from 7:40-6:40 pace. Ended the week with 50-miles on 7 days that I would say was not high on quality work, but maybe it was good to back off after a couple of faster weeks. Hopefully, I'll start putting more structure into my workouts starting this week.
Topic: Biggest master's mistake you've made, and what you learned from it. For me, it was doing speed work without researching how to do it properly. I knew that I wanted to work on better turnover, range of motion, and power. I naively started adding in some speed work to the end of some of my long runs and incorporating some into interval track workouts. I'd really never been trained properly for doing speed work (not even in high school), so now in hindsight, I can see that I did too many reps, too hard, without enough rest in between (I basically did them like shortened versions of aerobic work). Bottom line is that out of ignorance, I overdid it to the point of aggravating my hip and it has taken a long time to recover from this mistake. I've learned that speed stuff should be done sparingly and with plenty of recovery. Also, explosive power can be achieved at lower risk by doing form drills and hill sprints...for distance runners, those probably are all that are truly needed. I'm sure Spikez will have a different take, but then again, she has been properly trained to for speed.
OK. Hope everyone is having a great week and I look forward to hearing what you all are up to.