I have realized recently that one of the reasons I really get into this phase of my running training is the same thing that attracts me to Text sim games. I love the stats, the analysis, the training schedule, etc. I basically turn myself into a simulation game while getting ready for the next "season". Just like a game of FOF or FM, my season involves setting up the preseason goals for that "season", setting up the training plan, incorporating the practice, then the execution of the "season", followed by the analysis of how things went and where things went wrong.
So far this year, obviously with my back surgery, I had to start a little late after taking off 6 weeks without running, but my three "seasons" were my 5k goal to run under 30 minutes in a race in March, my 10k goal for running under 1 hour in a race in June and my goal to run a half-marathon in September. I was successful with my first "season", the training plan went as well as I had hoped. My second "season" was close, but no cigar. My 10k, I came a little over 1 hour. I have spent plenty of time analyzing what went wrong and am pretty comfortable saying that I did the training, just wasn't ready for the sudden weather change.
The nice thing about running that is different from FOF or FM or OOTP is that I get a chance for do-overs in a sense. I have the Any-Way 10k challenge from Strava this coming weekend, and then my half-marathon relay where I will be running 6.55 miles the following weekend. Either one of those should be a good chance I think to reach my goal of sub-1 hour 10k. Both will have challenges though, next weekend, in addition to the Any Way challenge, I also am signed up for 6 hours of Relay for Life in the morning. I'm not sure if I want to do the 10k before or after, but am leaning to trying it before. Either way, that is a boat-load of miles on my feet for just one day. (My guess is I will go close to 20 miles that day in combination of the two). The half-marathon relay race, I'm running with my wife, and she's getting the easier mostly downhill leg. So about 80% of mine will be a slight incline. Not enough probably to be horribly bad, but not necessarily ideal for me to run a personal record.
Either way, those are my last chances to get the unfinished business with a 10k in a race completed before I really buckle in for my next "season". June 23 is when my true training plan for half-marathon begins, and if I keep messing around with 10k PR, I'll lose complete focus on my real goal that I am trying for. You can't burn the candle on both ends in running and get away with it. I need to keep my easy runs easy, and my hard runs focused on what the goal is.
A small excerpt from an article written by Dr. Jack Daniels on the subject of training:
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Training intensities that fall into 'No man's land," are either too easy or too hard to reap the benefits you want. You are not, as may sometimes be assumed, achieving the purpose of training the two systems on either side of the chosen intensity. What you are doing might be termed, "Quality-junk" training. At the least, it is training aimed at accomplishing an unidentifiable purpose. Always have a purpose for every training session; ask yourself the following questions: "What system do I hope to improve by doing this workout,' and 'What am I really trying to accomplish?"
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You can read more of that article here:
http://www.coacheseducation.com/endu...els-aug-00.htm
So I briefly discussed my next training plan in a previous post, but one thing that I realized is that I had not really re-qualified my times, or determined what my true paces for this next round of training should be. I was running off of numbers from last March, and I felt I had a decent amount of extra fitness from what I had previously. (At least 1 or 2 on a VDOT scale). I recently posted the below quote, but pay close attention to the bolded part...
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Originally Posted by Alan T
So I still have goals for breaking an hour on a 10k, as well as a less likely 25 minute 5k. I think 26-27 minute is possible with the right weather for me right now though. I also want to run a half marathon distance some point this summer (By mid-August) to be ready for a half marathon race I want to run in September.
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So, I did exactly that, and ran a 5k race last weekend. Partially to help myself feel better about a tangible increase in my running, but also partially to find where my current fitness level was at. Not only did I beat my previous 5k record, but I pretty much crushed it, beating the time by over a minute and close to 90 seconds. The official scorer put me at 26:29 for the 5k, which is exactly where I guessed I would be in the above bolded quote. For Strava purposes, my watch ended up measuring it just short of the 3.11, so it did not recognize it as my new Personal record for that distance. Not a huge deal, but for training purposes, I wanted to make sure that I did not mess with the numbers too much. I took what my watch measured, and plugged it into the Performance Predictor, and it said it would have been a 27.12 5k. I likely was faster than that since I was booking at the end when I stopped, but just to play it safe, that is the number that I went with.
I have a huge spreadsheet of Daniels calculations and training tables that I'll post next time (hopefully tomorrow), but the 27:12 time definitely changed some of my paces just slightly. Since I have a softball game to go to tonight, I'll cut this off here and cover that part of my training plan next time.