Long entry punishment
It has been a long time since my last entry on the Easy Gate. I have been on an east coast tour of sorts. On Friday I headed down to NYC for the Chase Corporate Challenge. I represented my employer, Raytheon, in the International Championships on Park Avenue. I was able to control myself very well considering the fitness I have built up and knowing the whole race I could be going much faster.
1. 5.01
2. 5.01 10.02
3. 5.01 15.03
3.5 2.27 17.30
No kidding. Dead on 5.00 pace. I don’t think I have ever done that in my entire life. Typically when I want to tempo a race it is too fast and I can not control my effort and make it an actual tempo. It is never really a race but somewhere between tempo and race effort. Saturday I behaved and actually did what I planned to do. It was a minor miracle.
After a quick breakfast and award ceremony with the other athlete’s we headed down to Washington DC for the AUSA Convention and the Army 10 miler. Here I was not as successful in carrying out my race plan but I do not think it matters at all. I planned to go out in 5:28 and then run 8 miles at 5:24 and then pick up the last mile but it just felt all wrong. I decided to run 5:20 pace and try to stay steady until the last mile. Well, I have no feel for 5:20 pace because I didn’t hit it once. The thing is I never felt like I was running fast and no acid ever started to build up so I just figure I am in good shape. Here are the splits from the watch.
1. 5.21.15
2. 5.16.84 10.37.99
3. 5.18.04 15.56.03
4. 5.14.06 21.10.09
5. 5.23.50 26.33.59
6. 5.12.22 31.45.81
7. 5.13.84 36.59.65
8. Missed Split. 5:13 I think
9. 10.25.37 47.25.02
10. 5.04.14 52.29.12
The rest of the week was spent at various meetings and convention type things. I came down with a cold on monday that I am just starting to shake. Not a lot of running for me this week of note. On Monday we did 6 miles up around the capital, down the mall, then around the dc monument. Tuesday was 1:00 run through East Potomac Park around the awakening statue to give the poseidon guy a high five and then went back to the hotel. Wednesday Justin and I ran the Roosevelt island run up the bike path and through the marsh boardwalk for 1:00 of running.
Which brings us to yesterday. Justin and I had planned to do a morning workout before our flight to Boston. We found a track on google maps and figured it would work well. Turns out the Washington dc area gets pretty sketchy once you pass 5th street and the neighborhoods are not so nice. Going on my theory that there are no bad neighborhoods at 7:00 am we kept going to the track. It was bolted and fenced tighter than fort knox. I also believe two white guys would be noticed running on this track, in this neighborhood, in not too long. So we aborted the workout and decided to put it off until we reached the safer haven of Bowditch field in Framingham, MA. This unfortunately broke my rule of “no more doubles.” What can you do? We don’t choose these things, they choose us. Plus it was only a 27 minute shakeout run anyway. With all the adrenaline I had after running through that section I didn’t even feel it.
The workout was 3 miles at 5:25, 2 miles at 5:10, 1 mile at 5:50, and 800m at 2:20.
Here is how it went down:
3 miles
1. 5.25.55
2. 5.23.26 10.48.81
3. 5.24.81 16.13.62
3.56.52 rest
2 miles
1. 5.06.27
2. 5.09.50 10.15.77
3.00.54 rest
1 mile
1. 4.48.25
3.05.22 rest
1/2 mile
800m 2.14.94
Thank you for your support if you are still reading this.
I am just over a week away from Chicago and everything is on track.
That's all I got.