I've been looking into this Hadd guy, who posted the essentials of his training philosophy, which I think is pretty Lydiardist, on letsrun.com a while ago. It's definitely a different take on training compared to Daniels, which is what I had been following before I got injured last spring. I think with the pose technique that I've going now, I have a shot at doing some long mileage, which I've never been able to do in the past. So the Lydiard approach is of interest to me, emphasizing as it does big miles.

On the other hand, I was looking back at my training from early last year. I did six weeks of base, and then started mixing in faster paced work a la Daniels. I improved pretty quickly: week 6 I raced a 12:56 two mile, week 9 I ran a 5:26 1500m, then in week 11 a 19:20 5k. Maybe that's significant enough that I don't need to go switching stuff around. But maybe that's easy improvement for me. Maybe it's after the week 11 19:20 5k things get a little dicey and the improvement slows. Maybe it's significant that in week 12 I ran a 12:06 two mile, which is not real different from the 19:20 5k. And I've pretty much been doing a Daniels type training system for the last few serious years of training that I had, could be time for a switch.

Sunday's 10 miler went just fine, and I did some drills this morning before dawn in the rain. Could be a long week of running, as it's all going to have to get done early, and it's supposed be rainy through Thursday.

wow, it's been forever since I blogged. I managed 30 miles last week and I'm about to get 40 this week, after tomorrow's ten miler. I raced a 5k on Thanksgiving. That went pretty well. It was a little experience in staying calm in positive because I was really ticked about the starting situation. They've got 17,000 people entered in the race, and the race website promised starting corrals based on time, but no corrals. Just 17,000 people of all speeds, shapes, and sizes crammed onto J street in no particular order. I didn't want to be right on the line or anything, since there were some seriously fast people in the race and I certainly didn't need to start with them. I ended up about 8-10 people deep on the start line and the start was a zoo. I almost fell twice, there were all these really slow people ahead of me for at least a quarter mile, I passed a 7 year old kid whose father kept telling him to breathe.

Anyway, I got a little panicky with the starting situation but I mostly calmed down by about a half mile, and went through the mile right around 6:30 which was a little quicker than I planned. The second mile felt short and I went through in 13:04. Then I must have slowed down a bit the last mile, as my final time was 20:40. Later on, some of my teammates were thinking that the first and second mile marks were placed a little short. Who knows. I could have gone a little faster the last mile but I started to feel like I was going to dry heave so I slowed a bit.

I felt like my form was pretty good after a half mile. That first half mile I was pretty tweaked and I actually managed to generate pain in both shins. I must have been overstriding pretty badly. It was a good cue to get things under control and go back to concentrating on the pull. Once again, I think I had some difficulty with the faster pace at the end of the race. I had a moderate finishing kick, and I think I might have been pushing some, as I have had really tight calves since the race.

No more racing for a while. I'm looking at doing the whole local road race circuit next year, and it kicks off with a 10 miler in early March, so that might be my next race.

Quite a bit has gone on since the cross country race. I was pretty happy with the way my race turned out, particularly the strategy of going slow and having a strong finish. But the next day I had major quad soreness. I could barely walk, let alone run. I ended up taking three days off from running. It really took the wind out of my sails as far as the race went.

But then I felt pretty good towards the end of the week, and I figured I woud go ahead with a long run on Sunday. J was running a 30k in a little town near our house. They also had a half marathon, so I went ahead and signed up for it, and got to run on closed country roads, lined by vineyards, with plenty of water stations. Probably running 13 miles wasn't exactly in the plan, but I felt pretty good. I started out running 9 minute miles, then gradually picked it up and ran quite a few miles in the 8:30 range. I had difficulty keeping the pace there the last two miles. There were quite a few women ahead of me who were dying and it was hard not to want to pick them off, even though it was a meaningless thing to do. I ended up running 1:52.

I got up early and did an easy easy 20 minutes and some drills. I gotta get back with it tomorrow as I would like to start building mileage.

even pace

I ran my first post-pose race today. It was the last cross country race of the season in the local USATF series. I jumped in to help the team that I'm on, even though I'm far from being in form. I figured that I could probably sustain a tempo effort for 3 miles, but the race is 4, so I planned to go out very conservatively and then start to roll. I got a little freaked right before the race because I found out that our club's coach declared me on the A team, and I wasn't at all confident that that was the right move. I hadn't been following race results much and I thought there might be faster women who were declared on the B team. All of a sudden there was this added pressure.

But I stuck to my plan and went out in 7:05 for the first mile, a lot of which is downhill. Pretty much my entire team was ahead of me, and I was feeling a little negative at the one mile mark. I didn't know how many of them I would catch, and I didn't feel especially great at that point. Even though it was kind of slow for an in-shape me, 7:05 is the fastest mile I've run in a long time and it felt harder than I thought or hoped it would have. I started passing some people in the second mile and then in the third mile, people started coming back to me in chunks. The only other split I got was my 3 mile at 21:48, so I actually slowed down too, but most people around me were slowing down more. The last mile was great. I started a kick around a half mile out and rolled on a lot of women. I had a couple of moments where I was thinking shutting it down, but the competitive juices were flowing, and I think I ran reasonably close to my limits. I can't remember my finishing time, but it'll be up on the web in a day or so.

I did a two mile cool-down with my teammates and it was very difficult, I was beat. My right calf was a little tight after the race, but not too bad. I think I lost the pose form on my kick. I was trying to maintain it, but I was pretty hyped up and I was concentrating on passing people and running tangents. Also, there came a time when I wasn't really capable of pulling fast anymore. The race exceeded my pose abilities by a little. Hopefully soreness will be minimal, it's always hard to know until the next day. Anyway, it was fun, and I ended up 4th on the team so the coach got it right. I wasn't too close to my potential, (I was 116th, and I know I can knock off a couple dozen more places if I was in shape,) but the race really fired me up for more training, and that's worth a lot.

I've been having a nice week of training, despite being super busy. Some bad planning on my part led to my having to sit in a CPR course from 6-10pm on Monday and Wednesday of this week, which really limited my time for running if I was also planning to eat and sleep. I took Monday off, and didn't have a lot of time to train on Tuesday because I have class that night, (my regular class for my masters degree,) but I did get a good session of drills in and about a mile and a half of easy running before I literally had to run to class. Yesterday I did 5+ miles, and today I did close to 5 plus a short drill session.

The idea of a marathon next year has been floating into my mind. For the first time, I think I will be able to stay pretty healthy and do some high mileage, and it seems like a little bit of a waste not to go out and try a marathon. After all, everyone seems to be doing. J. is considering Chicago next year, maybe I should too. He knows someone who can lend us an apartment very close to the start of the race for free, so that cuts down on a lot of lodging cost. I think I'll play it by ear for a little while and see how training goes. If I am able to ramp up the mileage and not get hurt, I think I might go for it. I think I remember reading that they have a start area at Chicago up near the front that you have to qualify to get into with either a half marathon or full marathon time. If anyone happens to know what those times are for women, could you please post them as a comment? I couldn't find any info on the Chicago marathon website.