Dyno Tuning
A bit of sharpening work before a race is the best way to measure how ready you are to race. When you just go out and do workouts for weeks on end it is hard to know where you stand until you take a workout that is specifically designed to get you ready for a fast race. I compare it to dyno tuning your car. You spend all this time and effort building the drive train, strengthening the engine internals, and making a strong chasis. When it is all put together and running, you tweak the body panels around the edges, give it a nice paint job, and take it to the dyno. The fuel mixture, timing, and spark are all calibrated to just give you that extra few hp you may need coming out of a corner. You don't dyno a piece of garbage car. It is a waste of time to fine tune something that needs to be rough tuned. Same goes for my training. I don't typically do spot on sharpening workouts unless I am ready to be sharpened by a laser, not a grinding stone. If what you need is 8 x 800 (ginding stone), your time would be much better spent doing that rather than 2 x 200, 300, 400 (laser).
Last night at Reggie Lewis for example, 5 x 600m with 2 minutes rest @ 1:37, 1:38, 1:36, 1:35, 1:34. Feeling very comfortable the whole way and surging with no problem around the college kids running in lanes 1 and 2 next to each other. Still managed to nail the times even though the pace was uneven and broken throughout the interval.
This weekend is another attempt at the 5k at BU for the St. Valentines race. I have been placed into the seeded section which will be necessary to run the 14:07 required for qualification into Indoor Nationals. The workouts I have been doing certainly point to being able to run 4:32 pace until picking it up the last two laps. Just have to go out smart and on pace.
Next week the workouts should not be as crowded because I think the college season is starting to wind down and the high school racing season is almost over.
Oh yeah, Nobscott shake-out at lunch for 5 in 34:04 with three sets of abdominals after the run. The trails are drying out and proving as an excellent wind block.