Monmouth Mile

This weekend's competition was an open mile race at Monmouth University. I had heard through the grapevine that Princeton was sending their whole team to run this race, which was good enough for me. In the fast heat there was myself, a Monmouth guy with about the same mile PR as me, and fourteen Princeton guys. A few of them were running just to race, but a few were also there to pace Donn Cabral to a four minute mile. Since there were 16 people the first lap was all pushing and shoving as Cabral's group separated from the rest. I ran in the second pack for the middle stages.

I felt good in the middle two laps but due to the crowding it would have been a waste of energy to swing out and surge. The last lap went about as well as can be expected and I kicked into 5th finishing in 4:08.45, just off my indoor PR. I felt better and more in control this time around.

Coming up next weekend is the NIRCA meet, where I'll run more miles, and after that is the first really important race on my schedule, the 5k at Colonial Relays.

VCU meet and a new workout

This weekend was the first outdoor meet on my schedule. Our club team followed the women's schedule and went down to the Ram Invitational at VCU. I raced the 1500 and ran 3:54.88, and while it was a PR the time is clearly inferior to my indoor marks. I did not have high hopes for this race, since it was a relatively warm day, and I am not even close to acclimated to any kind of warmth (I felt terrible this week training in especially un-March-like conditions). Because of these self-imposed handicaps I was happy to get the win and not feel too bad during the race.

The real fun came afterwards. I had planned to run two workouts this week but after the first one on Tuesday went poorly I decided not to take chances and skip the second one and try and make race day a workout. To that end, I decided to take a page out of the Oregon Track Club training handbook and to a tempo run after the race. About 30 minutes and 1 slow mile after the race, I ran a 4 mile tempo on the roads around Richmond. It was extremely hot, the sun was high, I was dehydrated and, of course, tired from the race. Pretty obvious in hindsight, but I felt Bad. I might try this again if I skip a workout during the week but honestly this felt so badly (and I was running pretty slowly) that I would rather not try it again. Lessons learned.

Spring Training and Schedule

With a few weeks of not racing I've been able to get some uninterrupted training in, which has always been an important thing for me before a long block of racing. I do think the best preparation for racing is to actually race, so this coming weekend I will open up my outdoor campaign at VCU with a 1500m and see how that goes. These first few weeks of track aren't that important to me and will serve as "developmental races" and fitness checks. The first race that I really care about will be the Colonial Relays 5000m, and after that the Larry Ellis 5000m. I may try and fit in another fast 5k depending on how things shake out, and I definitely want to run a later-season 1500m or two, maybe at the Tuppeny/Swarthmore Last Chance meet in May.

As I said, I've had a good block of uninterrupted training. My intervals have been going well and I've got some good work in around mile pace. I've been doing some hard tempo runs with Digennaro and have gotten my aerobic fitness better than ever. I believe that to race a good 5k, you need to be able to run well both under and over that distance. The tempo runs have been my sustained > 5k work and the intervals have me covered < 5k, so the only thing left once I have that fitness where I want it is to do some really specific 5k workouts and then see what I can do in a race. I might also try to keep up some mile pace stuff along with the 5k and keep working on my speed endurance. My volume has been good and I've noticed in the past week or so that my easy/recovery runs have gotten faster without any noticeable change in effort. One thing I need to figure out is how to best taper for races, but a little experimentation is what the early-season races are for.

Today it is going to be 75 degrees and sunny on the track. Nothing like a taste of spring to get me excited for spring track!