The brand new Mizuno Wave Universe racing flat retails at a hefty $149.99 price tag despite weighing only 3.7 ounces -- I did the math and that's $40.54 an ounce. Looks pretty cool but I'm guessing these things would fall apart after a couple of races.Nothing too eventful really, just another good solid block of training. 49 miles two weeks ago, 45.5 miles this week. The focus right now is getting quality interval sessions in every Wednesday (stuff like 3 x mile or 5-6 x 1K @ 8K/10K effort, followed by 4 x 200 @ mile race effort) and a solid 12 miler, pushing the last half hard on the weekends. Everything else is just easy maintenance work with strides a few times a week to work on the leg turnover. Pretty simple stuff really, but I've been racing better than ever since I started competing again so I won't question anything. Next race is a track 5K on Friday, August 17 in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Read more...
I raced on the track for the first time since 1983 in Ann Arbor last Friday at the Tortoise and Hare Summer Track Series event at Huron High School. It was a bit hot at 80F and pretty windy but I ran really well, nailing down 10:55 for 2 miles with a nice negative split of 5:30/5:25. 15 minutes later I came back and jumped into the 1000 meters and ran 3:09 going 76, 75, 38. Not too bad at all as the shorter races aren't my specialty, but this was a really nice speed workout. I was surprised that sub 5:30 pace felt pretty comfortable since I've been doing all my intervals this year at 10K pace (5:50-6:00), but as the saying goes, strength = speed. On Sunday I watched my BMLC teammate Stephen Magee kick some serious ass at the Waterloo Triathlon, finishing 4th in the 40-44 age group. We also saw our high school buddy Dave "The Dimmer" Dimcheff this weekend. He's the head cross country coach at Kalamazoo College and told us that we were good enough to make his varsity team this year. This lead to much discussion on how Stephen and I could get funding to go back to school for a semester to run cross country and have it filmed as a reality TV series! Over a few beers we pretty much nailed down a full season's worth of potential episodes.
Well, I busted my masters 5 mile PR in a big way. I could sense that this was coming. My training has been going great and I was convinced that the course where I ran 29:46 back in May was about 30-35 seconds long. Yesterday's race validated it. Everything really came together for me. Perfect weather -- about 70F with low humidity; a flat, fast course; great competition; and I was well rested. I went out conservative as usual for the first mile in 6:07 before upping it a notch and then it was an endless a parade of passing people until the 3 mile mark when there was a guy way ahead of me left to chase down. He was a masters guy I had never beaten before and I managed to catch him with about half a mile to go. I was 17th overall and 3rd in 40-44 (4th master). My splits were: 6:07, 11:55 (5:48), 17:33 (5:38), 23:16 (5:43), 28:53 (5:37).
Read more...
Back to TOP
