creature from the track lagoon

The rain continues. If I didn't have a race coming up, it'd be tough to get out the door for runs. But the Chilly Chase 15K draws nigh! Toward that end, i logged a soggy four mile run yesterday morning, and a track workout with a friend this evening. She's following a pretty serious half marathon training plan, so I followed her guidelines for the workout, since I'm still learning the ropes. We ran "mini michigans"; the workout looked like this:

warmup

800m @ marathon pace (8:15)

1600m @ 15K pace (7:37)

800m @ mar. pace

1200m @ 10K pace (7:23)

800m @ mar. pace

800m @ 5K pace (7:06)

800m @ mar. pace 

400m @ mile pace (6:21)

800m @ mar. pace

cooldown

The paces in brackets are my "goal paces." They're based on my *probably too optimistic* goal time for the Chilly Chase - 1:11:00. I'm pretty confident I can race this 15K in under 75 minutes, but 71 - my "A" goal - might be expecting too much. It's not an arbitrary goal. A 71 minute 15K would set me up for a projected 3:35 marathon - the BQ time for my age group. Of course, I have zero plans to BQ in 2014. I just want to survive my first full marathon. However, reaching roughly that level of fitness at the shorter distances would still be pretty cool. 

Anyways, back to tonight's track workout: it was windy and pouring rain (yet there was still one lonely walker on the track.. track-walking-i-don't-get-it) but my friend and I completed the workout. Unexpectedly, I nailed all of my goal paces EXCEPT the mile pace. No surprises there - i have a small build and flagging confidence, so I don't do well with sprints. Anyways, here's some data: 

My marathon pace "recovery" laps are actually too fast. They should have been at an 8:15 pace, but they're consistently closer to 8:00... Maybe if I'd run those slower, I would have faired a little better with my mile pace lap... You can see from the splits that I missed that pace by a full 20 seconds. Weirdly, I'd still say the toughest interval was the 800m @ 5K pace. 

I also went bouldering earlier in the day - only my second time back after a three or four week climbing hiatus over the xmas break. It felt good. I'm still far weaker than I was in the fall, but I felt more confident today than I did went I went on Monday evening.

I'm already freaking out a little about how I'm going to manage to fit marathon training around my class and teaching schedule this semester. I won't write about that now, though. I need to get some studying in before I fall asleep tonight. Goodnight all!