Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Back on Track

Dateline: September 6, 2005.

Yours truly posts a personal best 1 mile of 6:12. Not bad, I thought, considering that four months earlier my heirs almost got an early inheritance after I ran a 7:10 mile and collapsed in a puddle of middle age slowness.

Yeah buddy! Things were going the right direction. Right? Well, not according to everyone. Later that same day I spoke with my newly hired coach. He said, “You’ve got to be trained to burn fat or you’re not going to go long. Stay away from track workouts!”

Ouch! Pretty harsh but I paid good cash for his advice. Too much not to take it to heart.

For the past seven months I’ve concentrated on long, slow base phase training and strength building interval runs. I’ve dropped three percentage points of body fat and now I can run longer and farther then ever before. By finishing my first marathon in December and a half ironman in St. Croix I confirmed that I can go the distance but at a slow, slow pace.

Going long is a good thing but I want to go fast too. So, this morning I returned to the track for some oval trotting.

Here’s the drill:

1 mile warm up.
800 meter easy to hard build effort.
1 mile hard effort.
1.5 mile medium to hard build effort
1 mile cool down.

The results:

1 mile: 7 minutes, 15 seconds;
1.5 mile: 12 minutes, 01 second.

Wait just one dag gummit minute!

Slower? SLOWER??

Eight minute mile pace??? Oh, crap! Is that supposed to happen? Will I ever announce, "On your left!," again? Oh, the anguish; oh, the horror!

Somebody say it ain't soooooooo.

Stay tuned...

2 comments:

:) said...

Nyah... Speed is overrated anyway.

Just keep moving is my motto. ;)

Trisaratops said...

I'm with you. Speedy TriSaraTops officially left the building as of last December, when Ironman training began. I miss her a little, but Going Long TriSaraTops is pretty fun, too. :)