January update

Training buddy Jim Johnson called me out for letting my blog go stale, right after I had a very good workout worth blogging about, so here I am again with an update.


Last weekend at Providence, my team Mass Velocity won the New England Master's championship title, and I added 30 points to the team's total, with 1st place finishes in the 3000m (10:18.15) 800m (2:20.04) and 4x800m relay.  I met David Principe who paced me in the 3k, and  teammate Ian Smith and I ran 1-2 in the 800m heat.  Shag Makino got a nice photo of that race and posted on Facebook. 


Training has been 35-40 miles a week with 2 hard runs and 1-2 days in the weight room per week, and races on the weekends in December and early January.  I hit the All-American age division standard at the mile (4:59.01) and 3000m (10:04.04) at the BU mini meets, but no speed work yet, so my 800m times are still very slow.  Still working on strength, but the speed work will hopefully come together in February.


Today's workout was either a 3 or 4 x mile workout on the treadmill, similar to my usual hard workouts.  Target time is 6:00 pace.  I have been alternating with intervals and steady state runs for hard workouts (all on the treadmill, given the road conditions here), and today I wasn't sure which way I would go, so after the warm up I started the first mile at 6:00.  By the half I knew I was going to try to steady-state it, and try to hit all three miles at once.  I had the tunes playing and I was in the zone, and I made it to 2.75 miles comfortably.  I decided to go for 4.  I watched 18:36 go by for the 5k, a decent workout in itself, and still felt great.  At 3.5 miles, I realized I had it for sure, so I picked it up.  I managed a 2:51 for the last 800m, and I could have gone further or faster, but that was, it turns out, a 4 mile time that beat my master's PR.   23:51 for 4 miles, my fastest timed four miles in 17 years!  It goes up on the wall to the right; and it was on a treadmill workout.... very exciting!


This does bode well for some more good races to come!!


Darin