Fast Finishes

Had a really good final week of my 'unstructured' training block before I kick into my 10K program this afternoon with an easy trail run. I ran two key workouts that really emphasize finishing strong. The first one I ran on Tuesday is called the 6-5-4-3-2-1. This is a session that is done by the Zap Fitness team, who won the Open team title at Club Nationals XC last fall. After a few miles of warm up, you run 6 minutes hard followed by three minutes easy, then five minutes hard, followed by 2:30 easy. You get the idea. Each surge is one-minute shorter than the one before, but the catch is you run each surge faster than the one before while taking a shorter recovery (half of the time of the surge). I start out at just slower than 10K effort on the 6:00, but am usually running close to all out by the end. A perfect workout for teaching your body to finish fast while accumulating fatigue.

On Friday, I ran one of my favorites, an 8 mile progression run where you start at normal easy pace and then drop about 15 seconds per mile until you're running somewhere between 5K and 10K race pace at the end. This one went especially well as I finished my last 3 miles in 18:01, going 6:15, 6:03, 5:45. From having done this workout before I can guess that I'm probably in shape to break 17:00 for 5K or come pretty damn close. Definitely looking forward to a good fall because this is the best I've felt all year.