Week 4 Summary

My training plan specified adding a run day this week for a total of 6 days of running. On Monday I usually do not run and just do my P90X upper body workout. This past Monday I decided to stick to the letter of the law and I completed my 4/1 workout. A 4/1 workout is 4 miles total with the last mile run at race pace. Of course my race pace has not really been concretely defined yet although I am starting to gather enough data to determine what my race pace goal should be. Below is a summary of my Monday run. Additional information about the run can be found by clicking View Details below the table which will take you to the Garmin Connect website and show you all the other data if you are interested.

Split	Time	Distance	Avg Pace
Summary	00:35:53	4.04	08:53
1	00:27:44	3.00	09:14
2	00:07:25	1.00	07:24
3	00:00:43	0.04	18:49

For this particular run, my "race pace" ended up being 7.24. If I was able to maintain that pace for the entire 10K, I would end up running about 46.11 which would be a good time for me but would not beat my best time of 46.01. So while 7.24 is a decent pace, I am going to declare that is slower than my goal "race pace."

After my run, I did my P90X Back and Biceps workout and Ab Ripper X. I still enjoy these once or twice a week P90X workouts. Strength training and core work is an important component to training for running and triathlon.

On Tuesday after work, I did 30 minutes on the bike trainer. I opted to do the sprint/power workout again because I feel like I get a lot out of it. After my ride on the trainer, I went out for my 50 minute Tempo Run. This time I used the lap button on my Garmin so I could see what my pace was for the 30 minutes of running at "pace." As a reminder, my tempo runs always consist of a 10 minute warm up and a 10 minute cool down. The warm up and cool down bookend the faster running which is supposed to be run just under 10K pace. Below is a summary of my workout. You will see that for this run, my tempo pace was 7:19. This pace is just under my race pace that I clocked on Monday which is precisely the goal of this particular workout. To be honest, while I am happy with all of this, I am hoping that with continued training, I can get my race pace down just a little bit more so I can at the very least beat my PR and if I am able to bring it down significantly, perhaps I can compete with the likes of the great young runner Chad who will be starting 2 waves in front of me at the Monument Avenue 10K.

Split	Time	Distance	Avg Pace
Summary	00:50:01	6.32	07:54
1	00:10:01	1.08	09:14
2	00:30:00	4.10	07:19
3	00:09:59	1.14	08:46

On Wednesday, Melissa and I both did our Pro K morning swim workout. I was a tough workout. We did lots of drills including swimming with tennis balls in our hands and kick drills. I was a bit burned out on the kick drills which is something I need to work on. Undoubtedly, the Tuesday night workout impacted my Wednesday morning swim.

On Wednesday we had unseasonably warm weather. After work, I ran with Melissa. Both our training plans call for an easy 3 miles on this day. Typically I find it hard to run slow and easy on these easy run days. Melissa runs slightly slower than me so running with her was a great way to force myself to take it easy. The bonus is we get to workout together and talk about this and that.

Thursday night's workout consisted of speed work at the track. Melissa and I both went to the track to do our repeats. My plan called for 4X800 followed by 2X400. The summary of my workout is below along with the link to more details. I ran pretty consistent 800s with a 400 rest interval. Again, when I rest, I am still running but at a much slower pace. I think knowing that I only had to do 2 400s at the end, I ran them pretty fast.

Split	Time	Distance	Avg Pace
Summary	00:45:49	5.42	08:27
1	00:11:43	1.13	10:24
2	00:03:21	0.51	06:33
3	00:02:30	0.25	09:51
4	00:03:25	0.51	06:44
5	00:02:31	0.26	09:49
6	00:03:21	0.51	06:34
7	00:02:28	0.25	09:45
8	00:03:26	0.50	06:51
9	00:02:29	0.25	09:51
10	00:01:30	0.25	05:59
11	00:01:16	0.13	10:01
12	00:01:34	0.25	06:11
13	00:06:08	0.61	10:06
14	00:00:01	0.00	30:00

Friday was our rest day. Also Friday I had my physical. My plan is to write about the results of my physical in the next blog entry so that this one is not too long. Without spoiling it too much, the last thing the doctor said to me was, "Whatever you are doing, keep doing it."