Category Archives: speedwork

Need for Speed, part 2

Start time: 07/31/05, 8:00am
Location: W&OD Trail
Distance: 6 miles
Average pace: 9:30min/mile

Well, it was time for another round of speed work… I’d missed the four mile session two weeks ago but I had hustled when running up and down the hills of San Diego to get to my group run that Saturday, so I figured that was good enough.

After hearing how great the track at Wakefield High School was for the four-miler, I was all excited to be there for today’s speed work. The guy showed up to unlock the gates at 8am… and told us that there was an event starting at 9am and they would be setting up at 8:30am, even though we’d already booked the track and was told there was nothing else going on.

*sigh*

So, it was back over to the W&OD Trail. Yeesh. Oh well, it was nice to at least run a warm-up on the springy surface of the track; I can see why people were a fan of running along it! Speed work itself went really well, though. We only had half-mile markers so it was a little harder to judge how well one was moving, but by the end I felt like I was hitting it, despite the way we were running meaning that odd-numbered miles were slightly uphill and even-numbered were slightly downhill. I was aiming for 9:30min/miles (or 4:45 for each half) and I ended up with:

mile # first half second half total
1 4:53 4:36 9:30
2 4:25 4:34 9:00
3 4:42 4:41 9:24
4 4:29 4:40 9:09
5 4:43 4:48 9:31
6 4:30 4:51 9:22

So, not bad! I think I’m starting to get the hang of this thing.

Oh yeah, grand total of miles for July was 65.5, which was lower than the last two months… of course, I also went on vacation for a week, followed by missing one or two maintenance runs due to the heat. So, very understandable.

Need for Speed

Start time: 07/03/05, 8:00am
Location: W&OD Trail
Distance: 2 miles & 4 miles
Run:Walk ratio: all running & 5:1
Average pace: 9:30min/mile & 11:00min/mile

Sunday was my first official day of “speed training”. It was planned to be a short session, just two miles worth, but I was really looking forward to it. I drove down to Wakefield High School, which had given us permission to use their track…

…and the gates were locked. D’oh!

Once everyone arrived (maybe a dozen people in all, including Mark, Julie, and Laurel from my pace group, and my good buddy grok) we conferred for a bit and decided that as tempting as it was to just jump the fence, that if someone got hurt it would be A Bad Thing, so instead we carpooled over to the W&OD Trail where with the help of GPS units, quarter mile increments were marked out. It’s not a track, but until that gets sorted out with the high school, it’d have to do. I ended up doing my mile repeats at a 9:30min/mile pace, and that worked really well for me. I need to decide before the next one if it’s the right pace for me; it hit me after I got home that I had done the 10K (admittedly with a run/walk pattern) at a faster pace than that, after all. After all, I am supposed to be pushing a bit here!

Anyway, once that was over, Julie, grok, Cal, Rick, and I ended up knocking out a few more miles at a slightly slower pace. It was nice to get to just run and chat (all great people!) and was a great way to start the day.