Capitol Endurance

We hit up Capitol Hill for some repeats up the south side of the Capitol. It was a good night of baseline testing as we didn’t do too many nor did we go too far up the hill. That’s not to say that we didn’t go all out each repeat. We made sure to get plenty of rest between each repeat. Full recovery on the walk back down before the next one.

5 x 300m hill sprints.

Average was 1:30-1:32 on each rep.

We’ll definitely come back to The Hill and repeat this workout to see how we improve. Future changes will include shortening the rest period and then lengthening the distance we run.

Always a good time!

We used Monday as a recovery day after a weekend of racing, so it was a good chance to spend more time on the drills. We usually spend about 20 minutes of each workout doing drills, but we spent about 45 mintues working on pulling and falling before spending the last 15 minutes (and some extra time) getting in a good stretch.

Wednesday was more about pulling and cadence before ending with a nice 10 minute workout – 80m sprints every 30 seconds for 20 rounds (10 minutes). If the sketchy alley wasn’t so sketchy and didn’t put the 100m mark in the path of oncoming traffic, we would’ve upped it to 100m. Give us a few weeks to build up our shorter endurance and we’ll knock this one out again to every ones excitement.

Sunday’s location is still TBD. An email will be sent out to the usual suspects before then, so keep an eye on your inbox.

First off, congrats to Paige on competing the Cherry Blossom 10-miler yesterday in a time of 1:42:14. This was an improvement of 8 minutes from her previous time of 1:50:21 from 2007. Great job! She stopped by the Sunday workout and looked great, but not well enough to jump in on the 800m repeats. I don’t blame her!

In other racing news, the 50 miler didn’t go so well for me. My nagging hip problem that has remained dormant for most of the last 4 weeks reared its ugly head very early in the race. I tried to block out the pain and discomfort, but knew after the first few miles that it would be a loooong day. If I was already hurting at mile 3, what shape would I be in by mile 20 or 30 if I made it that far? I should’ved stopped at mile 11 after deciding I’d drop at the next aid station in 5 miles, and it was a looong 5 miles back. I had my moment of feeling sorry for myself as I let practically EVERY runner pass me, but got over it when I took off my bib number at the next aid station and officially DNFed.

I was able to do 10 miles and 20 miles the two previous weekends, but they involved a lot of climbing/hiking and fast walking/mild running. For BRR, I was moving at 10:30-11:30 min/miles in the first 6 miles. This is the most miles, and fastest, that I’ve run on the trails in quite awhile. I don’t fault the training one bit. For what I’ve done in 4 weeks of training, I was able to accomplish a lot. I think things would’ve been different had I not been injured going into the race. There’s always another day.

Good job to everyone who raced no matter the event or distance.

We’ve got Paige gearing up for the Cherry Blossom 10-miler on Sunday and I’ve got the Bull Run Run 50 miler on Saturday.

Two races that vary considerably in distance, so how should we taper in preparation in our separate races? Let’s find out tonight!

See you at 7PM near Lincoln Park.

We’ll be meeting down on The Mall this weekend to get in a time trial. It should be great weather for a long run, so don’t forget the sunscreen and water.

If you have a foot pod, Garmin, or other device that tracks your distance while running, please bring it.  If you don’t have one, don’t worry about it.

See you Sunday!