“The ability to recover goes away as you age. What I found is that my recovery is slower, and I can’t do the pounding.”- Frank Shorter
June 13 – 17; Saturday – Wednesday
A lot of thoughts on my mind tonight. The first is that somehow five days I’ve gotten away since my last post. I don’t think I missed many single days during the last five years. I rationalize that not having a goal makes me less enthusiastic to write. Arlene and I have been out Arlene and I have been out to some gardening centers to pick up flowers to set around the house and the patio. So some of my time these last few days has been spent planting flowers. I also repaired and replaced some window screens that had been busted up by our recent visitor , the rather large puppy, Gracie. But tonight I do feel that I have a number of running things to write about. And I can always turn to my distance running hero, Frank Shorter , to put things in perspective for me. These five days have been interesting and meaningful to me. And so I begin.
Saturday- As I described in my last post, Friday’s workout was five Progressive miles on the cinders. So,on Saturday I thought I would run a shorter workout with a little speed. I carefully measured a 100m segment on the cinder track.. I was pretty satisfied when I ran 15 x 100m, all in 25 seconds or less with 1 minute rest between each. The total mileage for the day with warm-up and cool-down was 2.75 miles. This was definitely the most intense speed work I have done in a while.
Sunday- Rested predictably sore legs.
Monday- I ran 4 miles on the Cinder track with still heavy legs. It took quite a while to get warmed up and loose. Finally, feeling a little more fluid, I increased effort on my 4th mile and finished that in 9 40. Still recovering ie: Frank Shorter
Tuesday – Still in a measuring mood, I mapped out a 1000m loop around my block. Then I ran 3 x 1k in 7:20, 6:12 and 5:30. I was not happy with the feeling of pounding on the macadam ie: Frank Shorter. That was at about noon. I toyed with the idea of going out in the evening to the cinder track for another workout, but the feeling in my legs made me give up on that idea.
And then there was Wednesday.
I stopped at the cinder track today on my way home from picking up a yummy prepackaged basket of fruits and vegetables from the takeout lane at Delicious Orchards in Colts Neck. The day was very humid with an almost constant mist in the air and about 74 degrees with a steady 8 mile per hour breeze. It felt to me like ideal running conditions. The mist and the breeze were quite refreshing. I forgot my Garmin: I decided that I would run five x 1k efforts at just comfortable pace. After a 1200m warm-up with frequent 20 stride pickups I began. My guess is that I ran the first one in 7:00, the next two in about 6:00 with my sweat pants on. Things were going swimmingly. As I approached #4, the mist turned into a gentle rain and the wind picked up. I made a challenge to myself that, if I could break 5:00 on #4, I could skip #5. By this time I remembered that I had an old stopwatch in the car. The gentle rain and the breeze still seemed to be invigorating as I started out at a quick pace with sweatpants removed. As I approached the 800-meter mark I started telling myself that, if I was under 4:00 at that point, I might consider completing a full 1600meffort. I passed at 3:45. Approaching the 1K mark I began to waver. But I passed at 4:45 and decided to “Do What Frightens You.” I excitedly pushed on to 1600m in 7:46.9! I was a happy me.:-):-) The rain and the wind subsided at this point. So,I bravely decided to tackle the fifth 1000m effort anyhow. I completed it in a relaxed 7:00. A 200m walk to my car completed a 7,800 meter day.
STATS ARE GOOD!