Commencing Phase 2

Spring is almost here and as racing season approaches, it's time to make some slight tweaks to my training. I've had a pretty solid block of about 10 weeks of running since club nationals cross country in Seattle, with a lot of solid 8-10 mile runs, plus four 3-mile tempo 'tests' and two winter road races. My unannounced goal for this training phase was to get to sub 18:00 on my tempos, while staying under 90% max heart, which I did this past week with a 17:39. When I start racing I'm going to replace this workout with interval sessions such as 5 x 1K and 4 x 1200 in the same HR zone with my recoveries based on heart rate. When the HR dips below 70% max it's time to go again. I got this idea from Rich Stiller, who has helped me out immensely with training advice since last fall (read his Last Chance blog, which is linked on my blog roll). I plan to race a little more this Spring as well. I will only do intervals on weeks I'm not racing. That approach helped me get out of a big training rut last fall and I ended up finishing the season with a few strong 5Ks and a solid cross country race. I'm 90% certain my first race will be the St. Malachi 5 miler on March 10. Not the fastest course in the world but a very competitive field and it's always been a good benchmark for me in the past. I'm going to be in New Orleans for a week in late March and have found a 5K to do on March 24. It's a 5:00pm race, which suits my body clock just fine and post-race there will be beer and jambalaya! I also plan on doing a 5K in Independence on March 31 (fast course) and a 10K in Michigan on April 14 (another fast course). After this little block, I'll finalize my May/June racing plans.