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Week 107
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Greetings fellow 50+ers. We have definitely transitioned into full summer mode here in the mid-south as Edgewood pointed out: heat….humidity....thunderstorms….bugs….sweat. And yet, a glutton for punishment, I’ve continued to run mostly in the afternoons; I’m acclimating…..sort of. Managed to bang out about 50 miles (OK, I misjudged and my total ended up 49.4) for the week. This was a pretty solid week of training for me. I don’t think I’m *that* close to the edge, though…..trying to stick with the fat crayon. Here's what I managed:
Sun: 7.5 w/2@12:10 + post-run
Mon: 5.1 “easy” + post-run + upper
Tue: 6.0 easy to moderate w/1@5:42 + post-run
Wed: 6.1 w/10x(1 lap@5k->3k pace, 1/2 lap jog recovery) +static
Thur: 7.5 w/5 on grass + upper + post-run
Fri: 5.2 easy
Sat: 12 w/4@(6:47,6:15,short rest, 6:21,6:15) + post-run
Notes:
-Almost a the running this week was done in temperatures in the 83-87 degree range of varying humidities (Saturday’s run started in the high 70’s).
-I put “easy” in quotes for Monday, because that was a most miserable run (87 degrees, 69 dew-point), and even this easy run felt like an unending slog. Tuesday was a degree or two cooler with a dew-point that was a degree or two lower and that made all the difference in the world.
-Wednesday’s track workout I should have stuck with the plan and just done them all at 5k pace, which I did for the first five, but then I took off a couple of seconds, which is closer to 3k pace, and so I had to stop at 10, when the original plan was to do 12x@5k pace. Nevertheless, still felt pretty good about the workout.
-Thursday’s run was a lot like the run a week ago on grass, focusing on high knee lift and good form. I ran this in my Nike Free’s and I’ll have to admit that they didn’t do it for me (I know, a while back someone said that these were the only shoes that gave them troubles.) I developed a niggle in my left knee, but I think it’s mostly just a tight IT-band issue.
-Saturday was not a continuous 12, but had a couple breaks as I met up with some of my buddies who had started earlier. Ran the first four (including the first two sub-7’s), stopped to chat with a buddy for a minute, when I determined that the rest wouldn’t be getting back for a bit, I ran another 2 fairly hard. Stopped and chatted with the others for 10-15 minutes when they returned. I then went on my merry way to finish off the remaining six at a moderate pace. For what its worth, the overall average pace for the 12 miles was 7:03.
-Still sub-standard, but much improved, on doing ancillary stuff. Hope to continue with even more this coming week; throw in some more dynamic stuff.
My True Highlight for the Week:
We have casual friends that we’d known from church since before they had children, and when they had they’re second child born 2-1/2 months early with a birth weight of 1 lb-13 oz, there were real doubts that she would make it. And if she did, there were questions about whether she would ever develop “normally”. Well, she did survive, but even when she was 4, she still looked like a toddler and while she was improving, she was still extremely frail and sickly looking by the time she entered grade school. We had sort of lost touch with the details of their lives as they tended to go to late service, and we were going to the early one. Well, I got a surprise Wednesday when I went to track workout; there were dad and daughter under a shade tree talking with one of the runners from our club. He asked if his daughter, now just finishing fourth grade, could join the workout, as she really likes running. There was a lady in our club who was more than happy to take her under her wing and run with her. “What’s she been running?” I asked. “Well, she ran a 5k in 22:30 a few weeks ago” he said, “not quite as good as she was running last fall, but she’s mostly been doing soccer and has only been running about 10-miles/week.” Needless to say, I am so happy that she is thriving, and thrilled that she is so enthusiastic about running. Turns out that 4th and 5th graders here in Kentucky can run middle school races, and 8th graders can run on high school teams. So she already had been scoring for their cross-country team last fall and hopes to contribute more this fall as a 5th grader. She ran about 4 miles with us this day, including 2 of the 3 1500m intervals that they were running. Her times were right around 6:15-6:18 for each of the 1500m repeats. Knowing what their family has gone through, to see this is a miracle.
We had a second highlight with a PT guy that gave a talk at our runner’s club meeting, but I’ll save that for another time, as this post is already getting too long.
In other news:
Ray Knerr ran another 2:00.xx time in the exhibition masters 800m at USATF Outdoor Championships.
Kevin Castille (I know, not 50+) ran 1:04:31.9 at the Duluth Half-Marathon (USATF championships), less than 30s off his masters PR. Of course, Meb K. is now less than two-years from masters rank, running 1:01:22!! And if you didn’t see the article (
http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/12/sport/athletics-haile-gebrselassie/index.html
), Haile G. says he intends to keep running and take down all the 40+, 50+ and 60+ world distance running records….time will tell.
Thanks coachkritter, for reporting those fine times out of Florida. Any other results to report?
Hope everyone is well, and very much looking forward to the stories of your running life for the week.
Cheers!