Archive for November 30th, 2010

Speedwork today.  6x.5 miles w/2min rec’s, chosen because it’d been 4 months since I’d done a 5k pace workout and I was really curious to see where I stood.  Fully prepared for a rusty one, I was hopeful that my speedier paces of late might account for something.  That, they did.

Splits were 3:16, 3:17, 3:15, 3:17, 3:13, 3:16, avg pace 6:30.  The fastest set of those I’ve ever done.  Total for the run with wu/cd was 7.5 mi @ 7:48.

So, what does this mean? It means I am officially back on the PR prowl again.  Finally.

My Goal For Carlsbad
I’m going to go ahead and say it now, because it’s the magic number for the next few weeks…7:05 pace, which comes out to 1:32:47.  Now, I need to also say that if it’s a warm day (because it is California and it could happen) then I’ll have to dumb it down on race day, but all my quality for the next couple months will have that race pace in mind.

I actually picked the goal a couple days after the Philly Half, thanks those final 7:05s feeling like they did.  But I still need to grow more – the course is supposedly more rolling than Philly and I want to keep the effort dial on 9.5, not go anywhere near 11, so I think that with 8 weeks of steady work, I’ll be in a good position to do it.

Owning New Paces
OK, I find the whole “owning” terminology a little psychobabbely, New Agey, but it’s really the best way I can think of to describe accepting new paces as mine and that I deserve to run them.

I’ve talked about this before, that I envision paces and pace ranges as hands on a clock face, which is pretty funny considering I haven’t owned anything but digital clocks for years. But anyway, I can “understand” the paces I personally come in contact with but anything faster, it’s like that great New Yorker cover, only instead of empty geography, time is the blank.  Anything faster than 6:30, I could not, or would not bother to comprehend.  Why would I?  My clock’s been stuck for so long.

That’s not to say I haven’t touched the 5:xx’s a few times, I have, but that was in strides and Billats.  And I’m not talking about 30 seconds of fast, I’m talking about intervals with some meat on them and 5K race paces that land in the 2nd quadrant of 6 o’clock.  I’ve held off on going there in my mind because what if I never got to have it?  That would suck.

But now I can see some movement ahead.  Like the excitement I felt when I was in the 7:xx’s peering at 6:xx’s till they became real and normal, it’s not ridiculous for me to start envisioning paces between 6:15 and 6:30 – a new area of the clock I can call home, that I can possibly get to own.  It blows my mind.