Gotta Love Thursdays

On a good week, I'm working out six days a week. Typically, it's more like five. On a bad week, it's three. But I always work out on Thursdays. Usually twice. Thursday at noon I work with a trainer at FIT, and Thursday evening is our coached track workout. So there are two "appointments" that I don't like to miss.

So Thursday is usually a tough day, and today was no exception. Jimmy (my trainer) always has something up his sleeve. Today after my warmup he puts down a 50kg barbell. The workout is this... 20 deadlifts, then 500 meters on the rower. Then, 20 Romanian Deadlifts, and another 500 meters rowing. Next was 20 high-pulls... which was ridiculously hard. Followed by another 500 meters rowing. Things got a little easier with the next set of 20 squats. And yes... another 500 meters rowing. Finally, the last set came and we lowered the weight a little: 20 push-presses with a mere 40kg. Followed by a last 500 meters of rowing.

After work I went to the Stanford track for our team workout. Another hard workout. After a warmup, coach Mark gave us part of the workout. 800 meters... Hard but not too hard. I was aiming for 4:30, but I paced off of Sheba, and ran a 4:08. Then, he broke us into three groups based on our wave... I am in wave 3- which is the fastest wave.

Now, I guess I'm in wave 3 because of my 5k time trial. I ran a 28 minute 5k... but that makes me the slowest person in wave 3, and I get dropped on most of the long runs. And actually, I'm slower than some of the wave 2 folks, probably because they didn't push their 5k as fast as I did. So, Sheba (my pacer in the 800) is in wave 2. And she was heading off to that group, I made her come with me to wave 3 so we could "suffer and die together." I figure the good thing about a track workout, is they can't get too far ahead.

So we get to the next phase of the workout which is some unknown number of 200s. Faster than the 800. So I'm thinking I want to do 1 minute. But each time, it's more like 50 seconds. Some were as fast as 47. Even when I tried to run slower, it was 53. I think we did 8 or 10.

The workout ended with another 800 - the goal being to run the same pace as the first one. I started way too fast - probably at the 50 second/200 pace (which I now realize is a 6:40 pace!) One lap in, Sheba left me in the dust. I finished in 4:26- which is still faster than I was originally aiming for, but way slower than my 4:08.

Now to bed. I'm running an easy 3 in the morning. Assuming I can walk.

Update

It's been a while since I've written an update. The IronTeam "off-season" is pretty full - lots of parties, planning, recruiting, meetings, etc. On top of all that, there's Run Team track workouts, buddy runs, long runs, parties, dinners, etc. So yeah... busy.

Some highlights...

1. Fundraising -- We hit $4,000. Thanks so much to everybody for their support!

2. 11-Mile Huddart Park Run -- OUCH! Lots and lots of hills. Over 2 1/2 hours to cover 11 miles?? You've got to be kidding!

3. Tempo Runs -- OUCH! I've been working on improving my speed. In order to do that, you hve to run faster... Duh... So I've been doing workouts like 3x12 minutes at Tempo pace - which for me is about 9:30 miles. I can do the repeats. It's just hard to stay motivated to keep pushing that hard for that long without somebody to chase.

4. Pac Grove Sprint -- FUN! Not my fastest outing, but fast enough to finish 19th of 29 in my age group. My run was 18:15 which would mean I ran 9:07 for the miles. I still think it was a bit short, but I'll take it. Definitely my fastest run on that course.
5. Ironman Canada -- FUN and INSPIRING. 59 of 61 athletes crossed the finish line. Hundreds of friends, family, and teammates provided support throughout the day and night.