Plugging away

Today I ran 46 minutes around the soccer fields at Eastlake Park. It is amazing how fickle this knee can be. Today there was very little sign of pain. I threw a couple of fast laps in there -- one 5:03 and one 4:45. I felt great. 4.5 miles.

Friday, it was 48:30. That was an easy run after a tough day of school. About 5 miles -- down to the track, a lap in lane 8 at 9:20 pace, and back. I probably averaged 9:25-9:30. The knee was painful the entire run.

Thursday, I ran with the rambunctious middle school kids. About 18 minutes, two miles. They want to go off in a sprint, and I need to make sure they are able to pace themselves for a longer stretch of running.

11.5 total miles. Miles on my new shoes -- 134

Fast tempo

Monday, I ran with the Columbus cross country team. 4 miles, "tempo", which Coach Jay described as somewhere between a jog and a sprint. I told Mike I was going to try to run with the 8-minute-mile group. Well, I didn't run with those boys -- they went much faster. But I did run 8-minute miles. I made it in 31:47 -- 7:57 a mile. I ran 15:42 for the first two miles, or 7:51 pace, and 16:05 coming back -- or 8:02 pace. It was great that I could run that well. I was hurting, but it felt great to be able to do that.

It portends a faster 5K for me. I've got to be able to run 22 minutes or so, which I'm going for this October in Iowa City.

Now, tomorrow, I will be running with the middle school cross country kids. Coaching them, trying to start them to a lifelong of running.

Miles in new shoes -- 122.5

Update

Today was a surprisingly good run. It was 4.6 miles, up and back to the First United Methodist Church. The 2.3 going was in 21 minutes, 9:09 a mile, with little pain to the knee. The 2.3 returning was in 20 minutes, or about 8:42 pace, which was very smooth. I'm getting stronger.



Yesterday, I ran about 2.5 miles after school in Columbus Junction. I ran with some of the girls on the cross country team, and we went kind of hard into town and then back up the hill. Then I ran 5 more minutes on the track. So the fact that my knee was OK today was a real plus. The knee doesn't get worse -- there's always a weakness and a bit of a pain. some days are worse than others.



One day after school early in the week, I ran about 4 miles -- 38 minutes -- up through the park and back. I was extremely tired but made it.



Last Sunday, I was going to do 7 laps of the grass 900-meter trail in the park, with a stretch of fartlek every lap, but only made it about 4. It was very hot and I was dehydrated. Truly a tough run. About 3 miles.

Total miles on new shoes -- 118.5

1,000s

I had a good tempo workout at the track. Started with a 15-minute warmup, then I wanted to run 3 x 1,000 meters at about 4:50-5:00 (or high 7-minute to 8-minute pace). I feel like I need to improve my guts in the middle to late in the race. I started fine at Winfield (7:26 first mile), but then fell off to about 8:00 the rest of the run.

My planned times for the 1,000 meters felt a little too slow. So I ran the first one slightly faster than planned -- 4:42 -- and felt great. I took a 1:40 rest, then did another one in 4:32 (7:18 pace). That was a little tougher and took a bit longer rest -- maybe too long. My last one was in 4:16. I started at 47, then ran a 1:38 400, second 400 in 1:45, trying to slow down and just get in a good rhythm. My last 200 was 53. I was hurting at the end, but the 6:50 pace felt really strong. My goal is to be able to get 5 of those with little rest, and I think that would give me a 22:00 5K.

After a 12-minute cooldown, it was 4.5 miles.

Miles on new shoes: 104.5

Sluggish run

I ran 53 minutes, 5.5ish miles -- kind of slogging through it with a sore knee. Most of it on the track, perimeter of the track, and about 16 minutes in the neighborhood around there. I was averaging about 9:20 pace.

I'm going to change things up slightly for the morning threshold workout. Instead of 2 x 1 mile, I'm going to do 3 x 1,000 meters in 4:50-5:00. Try to take about 2-3 minutes between intervals.

Miles in new shoes -- 100

Winfield 5K

The Winfield 5K went fine today -- 24:30 -- 2nd place in my age group. Not nearly as fast as I had hoped (22:00), but, hey, I'm still running and feeling good. No pains to speak of. Oh, my knee hurts a little now, but it is something I will be living with. That's what I need to keep in mind -- I'm out there living a healthy lifestyle. My times will come down as I persevere through this. Nobody ever hands you anything in running -- you earn everything. And I can honestly say now that it gets tougher with age. But that's OK -- if it were easy, it wouldn't be worth doing.

My miles were 7:26, 8:04?, 8:57 (8:08 pace) or the last 1.1 miles. Good pace, certainly challenging for me, pretty balanced. It was a nice course, a couple of challenging uphills, but not bad.

I'll keep increasing the mileage -- try to hit 25ish? a week (I'm at 18 now). And do some longer intervals -- maybe two mile repeats this week in 8:00 each (with 2 minutes between repeats).

So maybe it can go this way this week, August 3-9:

Monday -- 5ish miles, 9:00-9:20 pace.

Wednesday -- Mile warmup, 2x1-mile in 8 minutes, with 2 minute rest between repeats, 1.5 mile cooldown (4.5 miles).

Friday -- 3 miles fairly easy, 9:15 pace, then throw in 4-5 20-second strides.

Saturday -- 4-4.5 miles, throw in some fartlek, about 5 surges or so.

Then the next week (Aug. 10-16), try to hit 6 miles with a long run -- I'll run two days with the Columbus team. I'm thinking another run could be interval pace 1,000s (4 x 1,000 in 4:40 or so -- I don't know about rest).

Then the next week (Aug. 17-23), not quite as long on the long run, but try one day of shorter interval reps (5-6 400s in 1:45ish to 1:50).

Then the next week (Aug. 24-30), up the long run to 6.5 or something like that.


Miles on my new shoes -- 94.5

Golf course repeats

Today I went to the Winfield golf course and had a nice speed workout. I ran the perimeter one and a half times (18 minutes) to warm up and then measured off what I think was about a 400. I ran it 5 times, jogging back to the start each time. Times: 1:58, 1:50, 1:46, 1:43??, 1:44. I'm starting these off a little slow each time I do repeats. I think I'm not quite sure how it feels to run fast yet. But then I'm settling into a good pace that I can maintain. This actually might have been longer than a 400 -- it seems like it because the effort I gave was closer to the 1:32 I ran on the track last week. It was definitely faster than what I envision to be my 5K pace. But it's all good. It was a good workout. I feel like I can give a strong effort now and have some reserve left over. I ran a total of 44 minutes, including cooldown. Total miles: about 5.

Miles on new shoes: 88