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Week 206
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Howdy, 50+ers! I ran an actual 5K road race this weekend! Shocking, I know! It’s been a while since I’ve toed the line for a 5k race (since early August, actually), so I wasn’t sure what to expect…but I figured (based on the river-to-river, R2R, experience) that I could string three 6:30’s together, and if I was lucky slip under 20 minutes. For the week, I managed to put in 28+ miles; here’s the log:
Sun: 8.0 easy
Mon: off
Tue: 5.5 w/5x400,3x200 (1/2-lap recoveries)
Wed: 6.1 miles easy
Thu: off
Fri: 4.1 (7:12 avg pace)
Sat: 4.5 w/5k race @19:39 (553,629,643,34) 70 degrees and humid at the start
I’m struggling with interval work. The R2R took a little more out of me than I anticipated, and I’m not hitting as many reps at the same paces I was prior to the race. It has warmed up quite a bit, though, so I’m probably also not adjusting interval expectations appropriately; sometimes it’d help to have a coach to tell you to slow it down. In the end, the 400’s averaged 89.Xs and the 200’s averaged 36.Xs (the less-than-a-minute rests between 400’s were probably a bit short, too.) Friday was fairly smooth, steady running. I dipped under 7 for a couple miles, but tried not to tax myself. I decided only then to run in the race Saturday and scurried down to packet pickup to sign-up ($20); after all, all my friends were running in Lexington’s 1st ever Marathon, so why should they get all the fun (there was a half option there, too.) The marathon was on the north end of town; the 5k was in the satellite community to the south. I’ve talked about the RJ Corman property before, so let’s just say that his legacy lives on through his kids and the company, and everything I’ve said before still holds. I took off too fast (and I knew it), but I was feeling pretty steady, and it was really the hill just after the mile mark that just took the wind out of my sail (I’m gonna say there is lack of strength in my training that shows up in the intervals, as well.) From that point on, I just did what I could to keep the leg turnover going and to not stop (my brain was telling me otherwise.) I think that the pace for the second and third miles would have been about the same if not for a big hill on the third mile--Strava’s Grade Adjusted Pace (GAP) bares that out. I’m satisfied with the time, but not the pacing. Will I change it to something more intelligent? Maybe, maybe not. At this point, I’m going to take the attitude that whatever pace I run, I’ll finish where I finish, and I’ll be OK with it so long as I know I didn’t quit. At some point, a switch might flip and that faster start-pace will stick. It’s happened before, and so long as these races really don’t mean anything to anyone but me, what-the-hell. The caveat, of course, is not to hurt myself in the process………
Oh, and it was nice for Kevin Castille to come back up from Louisiana to watch kids he’d coached run in their regionals meet. I suspect he had other reasons to return to Lexington, but collecting the $750 winner’s prize (donated by the Corman Group) made it worth his 15:05 effort to travel here.
In other 50+ news, I see that Prof. Anselm LeBourne has kept his fitness into the outdoor season. Running 4:12.54 for 1500, 0.19s shy of Keith Bateman’s M55 World Record.
http://masterstrack.com/2015/05/35855/
KP, hamstrings, knees, and hips......all interconnected, so many possibilities. As a fast guy, I'll guess that you have a nice high leg kick and that the eccentric load on the hamstring when you snap your lower leg forward is causing a repetitive use injury...I'll guess that the knee pain is just symptomatic of that, and that the real issue is further up. Maybe a hard-to-reach muscle needs releasing and some deep (and probably painful) massage might be in order. Just a guess; I'm no expert, for sure. What does your sports doc think?
That’s about all I have for this week; progress, not perfection. Hope that you are in a good place and look forward, as always, to reading your weekly report/update.
All the Best!