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No, I'm not planning on furthering my education, but as I approach the 45-49 age group I'm approaching my running like the transition from high school training to college training. In some ways my 40-44 masters 'career' was like high school. I trained solidy, raced well, but 'could' have done more. My main concern when I started running again at age 40 was to try to make this a lifetime sport and not crash and burn like I did after high school. In retrospect, I think I played it a little too safe. Now, I'm starting to feel motivated to really push my limits and see how many seconds faster I can push this body before I inevitably start to slow down a little. My training with my new coach Pete Magill is all about higher volume and higher intensity than I had been used to and I seem to be handling it really well. In college I was a dumb ass and thought I could party hard and run hard like Prefontaine or something, but truth be told most of us can't handle that kind of lifestyle. Hard training is serious work and that combined with a full-time job means that I need to rest a lot or else I'll get sick and/or injured. This past week I did 63 miles with a couple of really tough workouts that I didn't taper for at all. Today I did two sets of a 3-5-8 fartlek (3's and 5's at 5K effort, 8's at tempo w/ 3:00 between each rep) on the back of a 13 mile long run Saturday and two runs totalling 12.5 miles Sunday. Legs were sore but the effort was strong and I recovered quickly from each surge. This is exactly what I need to keep on doing to lower my 5K-8K-10K times and also to improve at cross country. Cross country is all about strength and hanging on even as your legs turn to garbage near the end of the race.

Anonymous –   – (10:16 PM)  

Rock,

You need to work on your speed this summer.

JM

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