So I raced up in Belmar, NJ this morning at a really nice 5k that I saw online because it had prize money. I didn't really expect to win any since it had some very good runners last year, and this year was even better. I raced it mainly because I wanted a checkpoint in training to see where I'm at. I ran 14:46, which considering everything like the weather, travel, and lack of a real taper for this race is encouraging.
This race is conveniently about 5 weeks before my big goal race of the Philly RNR half, which is what I'm focusing training on. That gives me 4 weeks of hard training and a week-long taper. Since I started training seriously, I've done pretty much entirely what I would term base work. That is, no workouts have been strictly timed and everything has been done by effort. Now is the time when I will start incorporating race-specific work, in this case workouts geared towards running my goal pace for 13.1 miles. I want to be able to run 5:05 pace on September 15, and I hope that with the base of mileage and hard efforts I've put in over the past 2 months I'll be able to do some key workouts to indicate that sort of fitness. I want to mimic race conditions as closely as possible, so I'll try and go in the morning (the race goes off at 8:00), wear the flats that I'll race in, and run the workouts on pavement, typically on the bike path in Newark. These workouts include:
Mile repeats: 6-8 a little faster than goal pace (4:55-5:00). To work on running at or just below race pace for a long cumulative distance.
Two-mile repeats: 4-5 at goal pace (10:10). To work on grooving in to race pace over a lot of miles when tired and instilling that pace judgement.
Tempo + reps: longer tempo run at a comfortably hard pace + a few longer repeats just below goal pace (ex: 8 mile tempo in 44:00, jog to track, 4 x 800 @ 2:25-2:30 w/ 4:00 jog). Another approach to working on getting better at running fast when tired.
Double Fischigan: At UD we would do a modified version of the classic Michigan workout that Chris Lear described in his book "Sub 4." This is the workout I would do on a track, because it involves repeats of 400, 800, 1200 and 1600. Conveniently for me, if not the team and general public, UD's track is currently unsurfaced (asphalt). The Fischigan is a descending ladder, but the recovery between all the hard segments is a steady mile and thus does not allow for true recovery. It is a simple workout: 4 laps hard (4 laps steady), 3 laps hard, 2 laps hard, 1 lap hard. The entire workout is 5.5 miles, so I'll do two back to back and get 11 miles. I plan to run the hards just under race pace, 4:50-5:00 and the steadys will be whatever is sustainable, hopefully significantly south of 6:00 pace.
These workouts are just some of the key specific ones that I plan to do over the next few weeks. Coupled with the 100-110 miles per week and another solid workout every week I hope to be in shape to run 5:05s in 5 weeks. I also just heard today that I've been accepted into the elite field for this race. Great news, since it means I don't have to pay the sizeable entry and I'm sure I get some sort of perks at the event.
