Friday 120514

News stuff – I got this from Alex:  a good presentation on polarized training.
-Yes, OSMP is a problem in the guise of a solution.
- An alternative theory to evolution. (your really got to watch the translator)
- this list (men’s marathon) is a bit nutty.  Compare it to the top US list.

This will probably end up on the calendar as a late spring test.

I have been kicking around what I ought to be able to do at XC Nats in a couple of months.  Last year was a poor performance because of the calf blow up (32 and change for 8k).  I’d like to think I could manage sub sixes for the five miles but there is not a lot of evidence that I expect that anymore.  If such a thing is to be it certainly is not going to happen by accident and so today I attempted to get back to some habits to make a go at that. 

I used the local “new” trail (the connector between the Lake Link and Coal Creek trails.  This new  segment is about 1500 meters overall.  I decided to do kilos on it.  It is slightly down on the way out and a lot of up on the way back (well, it felt that way).  I wanted these to be work, and not completely gut wrenching … so I guess some idea of it being controlled. I figured 8 of them and hence emulating the race distance was deemed an appropriate level of work.  I thought this would nudge me a bit because I knew I could probably fake five, but another 3 would make me deal with having to keep it together some when I was a bit tired.  These were done on six minutes, so if I ran one in 4 minutes, that would mean I’d get 2 minutes off.

3:41 (d), 3:54 (up), 3:37 (d), 3:52 (up), 3:37 (d), 3:55 (u), 3:40 (d), 3:54 (u).

I am going to try to do this workout with some degree of consistency over the next few weeks to see if I get any better at it.  The sum of these kilos comes in 30:10.  The downs were obviously sub 6, but not by much (5:40-5:50) pace.  The ups were around 6:10 pace.  I’d like to get those to be sub six as well.  And I think I need to get these to average (on this thing) at least 3:35 (today was around 3:46).  There is not quite this much up and down on the XC course, but it is on grass that can chew you up a bit.  So a baseline from today, but some work to be done. 

All the other details (like HR, etc) here.  The workout itself ended up rounding out at 10 miles.  About an hour later I got another 6.2 with this Dave, Ellroy and Vern.