It’s snowing outside again as I type this. Philly is very close to a record for most snow ever, so this is getting old.  Still, I have to thank the snow for some new found energy pumped into my running.

New route = a great find

I’ve mentioned how amazing the Parks dept is about clearing off the bike path so usually snow is not an obstacle, but after last weeks deluge, they surprisingly left it for a couple days so I was forced to change my usual route. No major complaints because they did clear off part of the river path going in the opposite direction so I still got my river fix, but it was a bit repetitive since I had a 2.75 mile loop to work with. I did this for 11 on Thursday and 8 on Friday.

Now, the good that came of it was that in order to get that loop, I ran on areas I’ve ignored in the past, one of which is a ramp that goes up to the museum. It’s about .07mi and Sporttracks tells me it’s 6.5% grade (with the elevation correction plugin since Garmin is an idiot when it comes to calculating elevation), so it’s short but quite sweet as far as adding in some convenient hillishness to my run.

Saturday was a 12-miler and most of the path had been cleared off so I was back to my usual route, though the icy sections made it more like a trail run in places, so again, I was quite pleased about the added difficulty.

Bits of gold in Runners World

That night, I finally cracked open the Runners World I bought. I never read that magazine though their forums are my online hangout, I rarely even look at what’s going on in the rest of their website. But I bought this issue because people were saying great things about the cover article on Kara Goucher. And my, oh my, it really is a wonderful article and I recommend everyone get their hands on it.

To find a world-class athlete has the same mental crap roaming around her brain as us regular runners was truly eye-opening and it hit me like a big fat hug from the Running Gods. Honestly, it gave me a new perspective on races, time and the future.

Another thing in the magazine that caught my eye was a speed workout article about developing a finishing kick. One of the workouts for marathoners consisted of 8-20 200m repeats at 5K pace. Now, that got me thinking about Jim who’s been doing Billats this cycle and seeing real progress with it. If you don’t know about Billats, read this article and this, it’s fascinating stuff. What it boils down to is that by doing short repeats with short recoveries, you actually stay in VO2max longer than if you did a longer workout.

Yesterday I played hooky

I felt enormously guilty about it but it was yet another cold, windy day and I was feeling cold in the apartment and frankly, just didn’t want to brave the elements. I appeased myself by realizing that my supposed cutback week had not really been a cutback at all, it turned out to be 58 miles and since I’m doing low 60s, that doesn’t qualify.  Blowing off yesterday’s 15 (I wouldn’t have blown off a 17-20) gave me 49.75 miles for the week…so a proper cutback.  Nothing lost though I still gave myself crap about it all day.

Today’s Workout, 11.75mi w/26 30-sec hill reps (Hillats)

I am so glad I took yesterday off! Seriously, I had a renewed energy and was rarin’ to run.  Since it’s going to be snowy tomorrow and my planned hill workout will be questionable I decided to do a modified Billat workout on that newly discovered ramp. I was pretty excited about trying something new and the fact that it’s only 30 seconds per rep is low-pressure plus it fits in perfectly with the ramp distance.

I did 7.25mi before hitting the reps (30-30s x 20, though the recoveries were 36-38secs to return to the bottom of the ramp).  When I got to the 19th rep I thought, “oh yay, just one more” but the idea is to do these till exhaustion and my pace was still steady, so I didn’t stop till 26. This means I should have done them faster but it’s hard to gauge that when it’s your first time and there’s uphill included.  Bottom line is I feel great about the workout, it was fun and I ended up with more hard running than if I’d done tomorrow’s scheduled 6 x.25mi hill reps.

Part of me is all “this is really not conventional marathon training” but the other part says “you hate the long slogging, so screw what “should be” and do what’s fun and gets you working hard.”  So I plan on doing proper Billats and these Hillats for the duration of the cycle.  I’m thinking it’ll fight off the slower turnover I inevitably get during marathon training.  As long as I have the tempos,  marathon paced workouts and LRs, it’s all good.

So that’s the latest dirt, sorry this is sooooo long!  I just couldn’t help it. :-)

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