Updating Things
(Photo: Frank Shorter and Kenny Moore, first and fourth, 1972 Olympic Marathon)
It's been forever since I've blogged and more than forever since I've written anything about music, so I'll try to be better on both accounts. As far as recent news goes, Bella and I moved into a new place at the end of last month. We're renting a 10th floor condo with fantastic lake views and enough amenities that you pretty much never need to leave the building, though I do for work (to pay for this!) and to work out. The running has been going well all of a sudden after feeling stuck in a rut. I seem to have come up with a sequence that works for me (inspired by legendary 70s marathoner Kenny Moore's training cycle that alternates a hard day, followed by two very easy recovery days). I'm trying to get in three quality workouts in a 9/10 day cycle that work on all aspects of my game. Key workout number 1 is a longer run (I'm comfortable at 12 right now and probably don't need to get much more beyond that for my racing goals, just need to get faster!). The second key is a high end threshold workout of some sorts. Last week I did 5 x mile with 440 recoveries in the park and another one I also like is 20 x 400 w/ 100 jogs on the track. Park fartleks like 5 miles of 2 minutes hard / 1 easy also fall into this category. The third 'big' workout is more in the 3K/5K spectrum, like 10 x 1 minute hard / 1 easy or the Moneghetti variation where you do 2 x 90, 4 x 60, 4 x 30, 4 x 15. I did the latter today and managed to cover a tad more than 5K in 20 minutes, hitting 3 miles @ 6:20 pace. I'm guessing my surges were around 5:20 pace and the 'slow' segments just over 7:00. Workouts like this are good race simulations.
Next Sunday I'm doing an evening 5K cross country race at Lorain Community College. It will be fun to dust off the spikes for that and have a few beers post-race with my friend Matt, who is also running. After that I'll do the Northcoast Challenge 5 miler on September 1, where I really hope to get well under 30 again for that distance.
