A Tough 40 Minutes

Well, I made it, but it was tough. After a day of hard running and a day of long running, my body was pretty tired today. But I will be travelling tomorrow and Wednesday, so I have a forced two days off. So, I did my 40 minutes today. I barely squeaked out 4 miles.

I know I need some rest at this point. I'm sitting here in front of my computer, yawning and wrapped up in a sweatshirt and fuzzy slippers. Yes! I am tired and cold - first sign that my body is trying to slow down. So, for the next couple of days, I'll be taking some running time off. I'll try to get a blog or two in but no promises!

Spirit Run, 10K and a new PR!

I had a chance to run a race in my backyard this weekend, so I decided to see how well I could do by running a 10K after my long run on Saturday.

I had a good rest Saturday night, so was excited to be running. My last 10K was the Dana Point Turkey Trot back on Thanksgiving. I woke up Sunday to a surprise - everything was wet outside! There was a heavy mist/drizzle out. So, I wrapped up in an extra layer and drove across the street to Fashion Island.

At the 10K start time, there was still a drizzle coming down, but this made the conditions perfect! Temperature was about 55, light cooling mist, and about a thousand runners. The only thing that would have made it perfect would have been chip timing instead of gun timing.

Since I had run 9 miles on Saturday, I wanted to make sure that I didn't kill myself. But, I did want to set a new PR for the distance. So, I used my trusty Virtual Partner and set a 10K distance and a 9:30 pace. This would put me at a 59 minute finish and would better my PR of 1:00.00 set at the Turkey Trot. The first thing I noticed about my run is how good I felt at this pace. I didn't want to repeat my normal "out too fast run out of gas", so I stuck to my pace. After about two miles, I decided that I would try to improve just a little and go out ahead of my virtual partner. Ever so slowly, I increased my pace. By mile 4 I was about an eighth of a mile ahead my my buddy, and still felt pretty good. I slowed a bit on the last uphill grade, but maintained by lead over VP. I knew that this meant that I would be setting a PR, because I still felt pretty good. At mile 5.5, I decided I would leave whatever I had left on the course. It was a great feeling to actually be passing people at this point as I increased my pace. It wasn't until later when I downloaded my Garmin that I saw that I was able to maintain a 7:45 pace for the last 3/4 of a mile. Wow! (at least for me!).

Needless to day, the day's events resulted in a new PR of 57.47 (gun time)! Yea! And, I still had enough to jog about 3/4 of the 5K course looking for my daughter and niece running that event. All in all a great day and a great weekend of running!

Saturday Long Run and a new way to use my Garmin

Well folks, I'm back after a couple of days off - of blogging that is. I had a productive weekend of running. If you recall, a for the past couple of weeks I've been having trouble maintaining my pace on long runs, often running out of gas the last mile or two. I know that this is a problem of going out too fast and not having enough in the tank to finish. Having done this exact thing at the OC Half Marathon, I want to start practicing the art of pacing *now*.

This weekend, I decided I would try to use my Garmin 305 to maintain pace on my long run. I have always used my Garmin in "workout" mode - using Training Center to create a workout that I would transfer to the Forerunner. While this is great for normal workouts, it doesn't make pacing an easy thing to check. First off, you need to make sure that all of the screens displaying pace display Average Pace and not Current Pace. Several times I have put myself on the wrong data screen and used Average Pace where I was looking for Current Pace and vice versa. Secondly, this method tells you that you are off your pace - but it doesn't tell you what you need to do to either catch up or back off. So, this weekend, based on the suggestions from the Runner's World Forums, I decided to try the "virtual partner" feature on the Garmin.

I haven't used the virtual partner in the past because the feature does not work with a programmed workout. The virtual partner only works on preset courses and quick workouts - neither of which I had used before. So, for my Saturday long run (9 miles), I used a Quick Workout by setting distance and pace (9 miles, 10:00 per mile). The Virtual Partner display then provides some easy to see feedback - if the Virtual Partner is ahead of you, the screen is black with the distance that VP is ahead of you in white. If you are ahead of VP, your screen is white with distance in black. So, Saturday's exercise became a matter of trying to keep the distance close to 0. I found that this was an easy way to maintain pace. In fact, I missed my target pace by one second (probably had something to do with the potty stop) and had plenty left at the end of my run.