Maria's Running Blog

Recovery run, 38:19. Ran really slow and felt actually better than yesterday. HR was 141 average.

Another recovery jog. I ran deliberately extremely slow, 43:19. HR was under 130 most of the time. I think I'm going to take this entire week very easy. I want to run a good 10K this Saturday, and I felt really tired last week. We'll see if this experiment gets me a better time.

another easy jog in 58:55. HR was mostly around 130-135. I think I'm recovered by now, so I'll do some faster running tomorrow, and then more easy runs until Saturday.

did marathon pace tempo today, sandwiched between some warmup and cooldown miles. All that jogging last 3 days gave me extra energy and I ran a bit faster than I intended. I wanted to stay at 7:50-8:00 pace range, but dipped a little under: 5.86 mi in 45:37 (7:47 pace). HR was 164 for the tempo portion and 145-150 for easy portions. 4x100m strides after.

No running today due to my poor planning. Lisa had a spring concert at school at 7PM, and I was hoping to go for an easy 6 miler afterwards. Well, the concert didn't end till almost 10PM, because the band teacher is retiring at the end of the year, and there were several extra numbers, speeches, etc. that were included. By the time I got home, it was too late. One more time, I see how much better it would work for me to run first thing in the morning, before work. It would be much more reliable. The problem is, I feel awful running in the morning, and I try to avoid it whenever possible.

very easy pre-race run, 40:37 and 3x100m strides. I am not sure it's a great idea to run just 12 hours before the race, when I usually have 24 hours between my runs, but I could only do it after work, which means 8PM at the earliest with my commute. I'll find out tomorrow if there'll be any negative effects of this run.

My goal was to break 46 min, and I was able to do that. I ran 45:51, which is the fastest time of the year for me, but still 47 seconds off of my PR. This was a fast (totally flat) course, so it's probably a good indicator of my racing fitness right now. Here are the splits: 7:16(HR 164), 7:23(173), 7:20(173), 7:27(173), 7:33(173), 7:25(176), 1:23(179). It's hard to say how much of an improvement this race was compared to 46:14 last month because this was a faster course.

I'm happy with the result, but not too happy with the way I ran the race. Contrary to the plan to start in 7:20-7:25, I found myself at the first mile marker in 7:16! I think I paid for it by not being able to speed up later. I settled into 7:20 pace on the second mile, but then all I could do was maintain the same effort, and the mile splits began to slide as I was getting more tired. I did push the last mile, but it only gave me 7:25 at that point. One thing I'm happy about compared to my 46:14 time in April is that I ran the last 0.2mi 8 seconds faster this time. I think it's because I was dueling with another woman, and we passed each other couple of times until I went into a full sprint the last 100 yards and finally passed her for good.

I was wearing my Garmin for the first time in a race, and it was interesting to see HR data. My HR stayed exactly the same from miles 2-5, which confirms my feeling that I was running the same effort, but the times were getting slower as I was getting more and more tired - this seems logical to me. I would have to increase the effort (and HR of course) to even keep the same pace. I was wondering what the max HR would be, and I got 180, but I'm not sure if it's my true max HR. I need to run some 5K's and see if it goes higher at the end.

Another interesting fact about this race was that it offered $20,000 in prize money, so a lot of Kenyans showed up, about 20-25 people. The winning time for men was 28:43 (Julius Kiptoo) and 32:00 for women (Ukraine's Tatyana Hladyr) - they won $2,500 each. The first Americans were John Henwood in 29:36 and Matt Downing in 29:39. It was cool to see so many Kenyans at a local race. One thing that is noticeable about them is how slowly they run on the warmup. No faster that 8-8:30 pace, it must be a real crawl for them (probably like 10:15 pace for me)!