Good stuff S_I! keep chunkin' away at those miles!
:(
It always kills me on the inside when people who run their asses off get tendonitis, pull a hamstring, etc.
I started noticing a little pain in my achillies over the summer. Luckily our family vacation coincided with that, so I got a chance to rest a week before it got any worse. Even though it wasn't that serious, I still know it really sucks.
Anyway, I wish you a speedy recovery. The only reason I started reading the Physical Fitness Thread again is because I wanted to see how well all your summer running paid off! So get better and run like hell! :)
So I feel like I am contributing to the thread, my dorm-mates and I are training for the Baltimore Team Relay on October 15. Its basically the Baltimore marathon divided into four legs: 5.7 - 7 - 6.3 - 7.1. I ran 7 miles in about 48 with a minute rest in the middle recently as a tempo run, so I'm hoping I can dish out a 47:15 (6:45 miles) for the race (I'm the second leg). I haven't been real consistent with my running, mostly easy days (around 5 to 6 miles) with tempo days thrown in. Its a little too late to do real speedwork, so I think I'm just going to do one or two fartleks/interval workouts a week for the remaining three weeks and hope for the best!
hey man, that means so much to me. I'll do my best to show you some good results come track season!
as for your own predicament, I'd ditch the intervals to be honest. just structure your fartleks a little bit so that they turn into interval workouts (i.e. 3 min on 1 min off is basically an interval workout, but you call it a fartlek and then run it more relaxed and better). I'd keep or increase the amount of tempo running. to me this is the secret sauce and also the most painful part of training, but then again I'm pretty much a pure fast-twich guy so maybe tempo running helps me best specifically because it is my biggest weakness. dunno. if you look up john walsh aka hadd training, you'll find he has a lot of good stuff on base training. 2 weeks out I'd treat this 7 mile race as a part of base for the spring. you can use it as an indicator of fitness and adjust your training further. good stuff!
ok, here begins my rant. I raced again yesterday in an invitational, got 60th in a time somewhere upwards of 18:30
this time around, I went out in a much more conservative 5:30, thinking maybe the fast early pace killed me last time. as before, my ankles and calves started screwing up just after the first mile, and I slowed considerably due to the pain.
the interesting thing is, I have no problem going out in below 5:00 the first mile of a 5k. it feels EXACTLY like the first miles of 5k races felt last year, at around 5:35-5:40. so I feel like I
am in the shape to run a sub 15:30 5k, i just don't have the ankles to put it together. but suddenly, I'm coming to grips with that. my important events are the 400 and 800 meters in track. hopefully, if i can just recover quick and keep my fitness where it is, I'll have all the aerobic background I need to run fast there. my achilles/ankle/calf issues only ever kick in after about a mile of fast running--before that they are calm, and I can complete long slow runs without issue. what I plan on doing from here on out is taking a complete break and bumping up my mileage to 80ish miles per week, starting deadslow, like 9:00+ per mile. gradually, I'll increase the pace, taking heavy recovery measures if my calves ever act up.
the cross country season is shot to shit; shame, since I was counting on it to give me that extra edge in college admissions. the good news: my top two schools, Caltech and Stanford, are bad at track and the best at track, respectively. so I haven't
really lost anything by having a bum season. I'm still in the top 5% of my class with a 34 on the ACT and national merit on the psat. gonna take subject tests in math II, physics, and molecular biology next saturday, so hopefully they'll help me seal the deal. in the meantime, track is definitely salvageable. I am going to do everything in my power to run 1:55 or faster. my coaches are confident that I was in the shape to run sub-2:00 last year, but wasn't exposed enough to high level racing (ya think!!! I never even lost a race) in order to run fast. this year, they're putting me in real meets during track season. I am still super pumped, and I am not going to screw this up again.
interesting tidbit: there's a guy who, for the past 3 years, has killed me consistently in cross country--always nearly a full minute ahead of me in 5k. I always beat him in the 800, and last year in track he ran a 52 flat 400m relay leg. if he beats me in distance and i beat him in the 800, I should kill him in the 400 in theory. killing 52 equates to sub 50, maybe. I'm excited for that. he ran 15:40 yesterday. I'm looking forward to competing with him too.