Summer Runnin'

Originally posted to my Facebook page on September 1, 2013

Welcome back sports fans, it's been a while...


Where to start, where to start. When I last left you, it was Memorial Day weekend and here we are one summer later on Labor Day weekend.


So perhaps a better title for this would be "how I spent my summer vacation." Running and working.


As I mentioned in my last post, my time at the Memorial 4 miler placed me in 8:15-8:30 LSD pace group in XMP. Somewhat a shock from my normal pace group (7:45's) but I figured, hey this is a rebuilding season. Half of June, all of July, and most of August, I spent doing my long runs at an 8:15 pace. On Tuesdays, I did my speedwork at a commensurate pace (in June and July and early August, we don't do speedwork on the track -- instead we do Tuesday evenings on the Rock Creek bike path: repeats of the Silencer hill, repeats of the Morman Temple hill, or mile repeats at marathon pace). But as I would do my runs (or finish my runs), I would look longingly at my old pace group buddies. Reminding myself that running slower was what my body needed.


But as August progressed and our long runs increased in distance, I found it harder and harder to run 8:15s. More importantly, when we had our first night at the track (4 x 1600m at lactate threshold (or 10K) pace), I knew I couldn't run at an 8:15 pace. Luckily, there were some others who had been running in my group also rehabing from injury. That first night at the track, Noam came up to me and whispered "I just can't run the LT pace for the 8:15 pace group, want to run 6:30's?" Oh joy! Chrissy came over: "what are you running?" "Noam and I are thinking 6:30s." "I'm in." And so we did -- it was like manna from heaven to open up my stride. Last week, we did Yasso 800s (6 x 800m at VO2max) -- we decided to run the 800s in 3:05s. Again, it felt so good.


Then this past weekend, I ran with my old 7:45 buddies for our 22 miler (the 3 bridges run according to the official XMP email even though we only cross 2 bridges: Key Bridge and 14th Street Bridge, still trying to figure out the 3rd bridge...) Running with Dan and Mike and Argaw. It's been since, what, August 2012 that I've run with them? That I've run this pace? It felt so good to run at that pace. Was it tiring? Yeah. It was a bit of a struggle the last mile or so (from the River Road overpass). But I did it. And this morning, I did not feel overly sore (or at least no more sore than I've off-and-on felt since returning to training in March).


This coming weekend is the Parks Half Marathon. The big question is what am I going to do? Part of me is encouraged by my track and distance work. See how fast I can go (to quasi-paraphrase Viv Savage: go as fast as I can for as long as I can). On the other hand, I'm not training for a half marathon, I'm training for a marathon (but then I would have to ask the same question for the latter -- what am I going to do at Marine Corps?), so perhaps I should take it a bit easy. Since beginning XMP, I've thought that my goal for Marine Corps is not to try another PR this season but to stick to my plan of recovery season (let 2014 be my attempt at another PR). I think I'll try for something between 3:10 and 3:15. So maybe at Parks, I'll try for a half marathon pace that will predict a 3:10 marathon. In other words, shoot for sub 1:30 (but not too much sub 1:30).


We'll see...