Week 2 - Quality Workouts

Q1- (Sunday) I ran my first 20 miler of the cycle this morning by going out River Road and putting on a couple big add-ons. Rusty joined me for the first 9 miles then broke off and went his own way back to the vehicle that we staged. We ran the first 9 at 7:30 pace, then I dropped the pace for the next 10 miles to 7:00 pace, and pushed the final mile down to goal marathon pace at 6:19. It was a really good run and I felt great the whole time. I am pleased that I was able to rip off a quicker mile towards the end. I wanted to hit marathon pace (6:25ish), but I was a touch fast. Overall, I came in at 7:11 pace but it was negative split. It was closed out by a hardy breakfast prepared by our wonderful wives.

Q2- (Wednesday) I did a 40:00 progressive tempo run this morning. I started with a three-mile warm-up in which I hit 4 x 30s strides @ 5:00 pc. during the final mile. Once I hit the three-mile mark I dropped down to 6:15 pace. I ran that for the first mile, then went 6:11 for the next. After two miles at T pace I dropped it to 6:07 pace and held it there for three more miles. Once I hit 5 miles of T pace running I dropped it again to 6:03 pace. When I hit 6 miles of Tempo running I dropped the pace to 6:00 for the final few minutes. I ended up running 6.55 miles in 40:00, which represents a 6:06 overall pace. It felt really good and I know that I could have shaved more time off that. 12 miles total in 80:00. I checked my running log from 2010 and found that one year ago tomorrow I did a 20:00 tempo run at 6:27 pace. Boy how things have changed!

Q3- (Friday) I did a similar workout to last Tuesday's, but I did one less rep today. I was planning on doing this in the middle of a 12-miler on the roads but it was -15 degrees when I got up, once again forcing me downstairs to the treadmill. Anyway, I did a three-mile warm-up in which I hit 4 x 30s strides at 5:00 pace during the final mile. Once I started the workout I did 5 sets of 4:00 hard/3:00 easy. The hard reps I did progressively harder, and the easy jogs were all at 7:30 pace. This is how it looked:

Rep 1 - 5:49 pc. for 0.686 miles
Rep 2 - 5:42 pc. for 0.696 miles
Rep 3 - 5:36 pc. for 0.713 miles
Rep 4 - 5:30 pc. for 0.727 miles
Rep 5 - 5:27 pc. for 0.733 miles

Total distance of quality running was approximately 3.55 miles in 20:00, which is an average pace of 5:37 min/mi. 10 miles total on the morning with warm-up and cool-down.