5 Miles Wednesday, Mach 29th 2006

Here is a spectacular view of Groton and the Thames river. If you squint, you can see us running today. I finished off 5 miles at a 7:19 pace - which works out to exactly 2222 seconds (spooky?!?!?). The first four miles we covered at a 7:16 pace. Not shabby. Still improving. 

One Week Into Spring

One week into spring and we have our first great day running day. I decided to take it easy this week, but ended up going out pretty fast and finishing my 4 miler with a 7:21/mile pace. This is about 10 sec/mile faster than my previous two tempo runs, so my speed is improving.

Run Home from Work

Here is my 9.7 mile run home from work yesterday. I had a good pace of 8:17/mile over the entire course, and very even splits: 8:13 for the first 3 miles, 8:27 for the next 2.6 and 8:13 for the final 4+. This compares very well with my goal pace of 8:20. I stopped the GPS twice, which accounts for the split points, do to dogs - I slow to a walk to try and avoid getting chased. I think dogs have surpassed cars as my greatest fear during these runs. I should say, despite the dogs, this is a great way to see the town you live in. I'm a lucky man to have a wife who'll drop me off at work without making too much fun of me for being weird. Thanks love.

On Tuesday I ran a 7:36/mile pace for 3.75 miles duing my lunchtime tempo run, which is pretty close to my 7:30 goal and not bad considering the wind we had early in the week.

We finally get some of the spring races starting up. On April 23rd, the Westerly Track & Atheletic Club has it's 26th running of the Clamdigger 5 mile race. Also on the run team schedule are the Flanders 5Kids 5K on April 29th and the L&M 3.5 mile race in New London on May 6th. I may be able to get to all of those. 

Friday Run and Monday Intervals

I went out with a small group last Friday and had a very good 6-mile 'long run', at a 7:55 pace. I know this doesn't sound fast, but the goal pace was 8:10, so I'm really pretty happy about this. The diagram is the route: we head up first, and then down to the coast which has 3 mini-loops (Jupiter point ~ 0.5 miles, the UConn Avery Point campus ~ 0.7 miles and the Esker Point beach parking lot ~ 0.35 miles), and then back up to Pfizer.

Today I did 3x1600 interals which felt very difficult: 6:29, 6:53 and 7:34. The last one doesn't look much like a speed interval - but it was uphill and into a strong wind - these windy days make going out very difficult, but I suppose that's spring in New England. Anyway, the average pace was 6:57, which is only a little off of the 6:55 goal pace. Not bad considering the conditions. I'll probably squeeze in my tempo tomorrow and then jog home from work on Thursday (which I'll blog Friday). 

A day off in Monte Carlo

Well, I'm taking a break from running today. However, we have the wonderful NCAA basketball tourney to keep us occupied. I've been doing some Monte Carlo simulations at work, and decided to see if a similar method could be used on our brackets.

It turns out, you get a decent correlation if you fit the average calculated point differential (for instance, sagarin rankings) , and historical win percentages for the different seeds.The parameters make good sense: 'a' should be close to one and 'b', the 'upset' factor (normally the temperature) is 2. Maybe next year I'll code-up the simulation and run a few million brackets to see who has the best chance of reaching the Final Four.

Interval and Tempo runs (Monday and Tuesday)

Here is a picture of the Avery Point Loop from Pfizer, as diagrammed by my Garmin GPS. I've done two runs so far this week:

1. 6x800 intervals on Monday. My average pace/interval was 6:51 min/mile. Not bad, although I think I can take these lower.
2. Todays run was a 3.9 mile tempo run at a 7:30 pace. The first 3 miles were a little fast at a 7:20 pace, then I kinda died. Hopefully, I can get 4+ miles consistently down at 7:20.

Next up is a 6 mile run - although the weather the next three days is looking windy.

 

Beautiful Friday Run

Well, I finished the week with a 5.5 mile run at a 8:20 pace. Still a little slow, but I think my body is still recovering from this spring plague that everyone is getting. I'm starting to look forward to the begining of the spring racing season. Monday I have 6x800s - always tough. I'll post my average splits next week.

Tempo Run Wednesday

A sick tempo run today. I was slowed down to 8:19/mile for 4.25 miles. Since the readout of today isn't very interesting, I've included a kinda-cool picture of Mondays 10x400's, via my Garmin Forerunner 201. Unfortunately, I've been batteling a cold since then - but at least I made it out today... 

My modified Furman University Training Plan

This is the Furman University half-marathon training plan, as published in Runner's World. It being winter/spring here in south-eastern Connecticut, I don't have any immediate plans to run a half-marathon. However, I'd like to keep a similar schedule - so I've devised a simple loop which consists of the 3 main components: an interval day, a tempo-day and a long-run day.Every forth week, I'll run home from work which is 10 miles, and extendible to 14 miles if I do the Bluff Point loop. The next time I run it (should be March 23rd or 24th), I'll post the route. Yesterday, I did the 10x400 intervals at an averate pace of 6 minutes and 42 seconds. Tomorrow, I'll run my standard 4 mile loop of Avery Point.