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May 28, 2008
positive's progress
I had just about decided to train straight out of a book for this marathon, when in typical joe-positive fashion I decided to join the other local running club. The coach is a very very very very good runner, and now that he's turned 40 he'll be turning the local men's masters scene on its ear. At a race a few years ago, before I'd ever met him, he yelled at me to "GET YOUR SHOULDERS DOWN!!!!!!" and I remember thinking "how nice, this total stranger is yelling at me like he gives a shit, wonder who he is?" Anyway, I joined the club kind of on a whim. If nothing else, a live-in-person human being might be able to tell me when I'm about to step off a cliff.
And another reason: weekly track workouts. The club runs on a nice cushy well-maintained rubberized (!) track about 3mi from my house, and there are lots of people to run with. For someone like me who hates track running, this is about as good as it can get.
I know that Pfitz doesn't prescribe much (track) speedwork in his plans, and almost none of it comes during the first weeks, but since I haven't run fast since mid-March I wanted to get my legs turning over before they bog down in the mire of 70/80/90-mile weeks. Last night's workout was 3x800/1xmile/4x400. Dror (coach) asked me if I thought I could run a 6:36 mile. I honestly didn't know, so I said no just to be safe :-). He put me in the group of 6 or 7 people that would run a 6:52 mile (and a 3:22 800 and a 1:42 quarter), which in February was a bit slower than tempo pace but now represented the fastest pace imaginable, this huge mountain I could never hope to climb. I was really pretty nervous about the whole thing, and to be honest I was afraid to find out exactly how slow I've become.
My workout is not worthy of a blow-by-blow description. It went fine. I didn't have any trouble with the paces; it wasn't dead easy, but I was fully recovered and ready to go by the end of each rest. And Dror did yell "GET YOUR SHOULDERS DOWN!!!!!!" a couple times. The pace felt like something between tempo and 10k, which I don't think was the intention but which suited me fine. The best part was that I woke up this morning not injured, not even sore, not particularly tired, and ready to run 6 very relaxed recovery miles. So far so good. I hope I'll be able to find a way to include stuff like this in the Pfitz plan without sacrificing too much of the good stuff.
Posted by joe positive at May 28, 2008 7:07 PM
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Comments
Excellent!
Posted by: Ray at May 29, 2008 1:21 PM
thought i'd check in as we're now Facebook friends!
Posted by: Paul at May 31, 2008 1:22 PM
Ray: happy birthdayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
Paul: hi!
Posted by: joe positive at May 31, 2008 1:35 PM