Wednesday with the Keenyans

It's been taking a long time to get my mind back into workouts, and even though I feel like I have put in some decent workouts recently, there hasn't been a drive to finish strong. It's been too easy to decide to cut it short and say it was good enough. Yesterday was one of those days. My times were ok, I felt alright, but the opportunity came up to cut it a little short, and I called it a day. Still an ok day, and I think I'm keeping my fitness level about the same, but progress isn't there.
Anyways, the Keenyans who showed up were: Justin, Andy, Greg, George, Erin, Sam?, Mark and me. Erin and I decided to do some 800s, 6 was the plan. after 4 we thought about doing some 400s & 200s to finish up. We ended up doing just 2 more 400s and calling it a day. Still 2 1/2 miles of speed work at a decent pace, but not too challenging.

800s
2:54/2:58/2:58/2:57
400s
1:23/1:23

Saturday is Mount Washington. I am looking forward to it, but we'll see how it goes. I am shooting for between 1:30-1:35.

1 Hill workout before Mount Washington

Well, I finally got in a hill workout before Mount Washington next week. I did 4 repeats of Joslyn Hill in Surry instead of the usual Sunday long run. It was a good effort for me, and I felt like I could have done a few more. It's almost exactly a 1 mile hill from where I started. I did just a short warm up, rested a minute or two, then started right up. It's a pretty steep grade, and consistent the whole way. It goes up about 500 ft /mile. Mount Washington averages about 621, almost 25% more. Yikes. My split times were faster than I think I can do the race, all under 10:30. I was glad to do each one a little faster, and I really had to push hard to get the last one under 10. I was pretty spent at the end of each repeat, so we will have to see what it's like to string 7 of them together. If I can keep just under 12 min pace, I'll do 1:30. So my goal is between 1:35- 1:30.

Mile Splits (with mile jog downhill to rest)
10:30/10:30/10:05/9:58

Wednesday Pyramid

It was a kind of cold and rainy Wednesday at the track, but a good workout nonetheless. The group consisted of me, Justin, Greg, Bojo and a new runner, Mark. Mark Miller is nursing a sore achilles tendon, and he wisely missed the workout. The new Mark is closer to my speed than most of the other guys, so it was good to have someone to run with and push me a little bit. After the warmup and a few striders, Mark and I decided to do a Pyramid workout, 2-4-8-12-12-8-4-2.I ended up not being able to hold on to the 2nd 1200. We only did a 400m rest lap between them, and that wasn't enough for me. So after the first lap I took a short break and then ran another 400. My splits were pretty consistent, and I felt like it was my first decent speed workout since the marathon. It was a total of about 3 miles of speed work. I was shooting for my 200m split times to start at 35, and go up about 5 sec for each longer rep. I kept pretty close to that.

My times were:

36 / 1:20 / 2:57 / 4:36
1:28 / 1:20 / 3:02 / 1:23 / 35

Today I am planning to run some hills in Shelburne Falls to try to get ready for Mount Washington.