Home Cookin'

Training Summary
This was one of my best week of training in a very long time. I got in a solid aerobic capacity workout on Wednesday and a very promising anaerobic conditioning run on Saturday. I didn't get in a long run for the week, but the workout around Lake Montebello on Saturday totaled two hours, so I am not too concerned. In addition to the two workouts, I also did strides twice. I am starting to feel like I am getting into shape and I am looking forward to racing in early May. It will be interesting to see where my fitness is and getting a baseline performance will be beneficial for my training moving on from there.
I have been reading Run Strong by Kevin Beck on my train rides to and from BC for class and I have worked to create a training plan that will carry me through the middle of May. A lot of what Joe Rubio talks about in the book is doing the types of workouts that target your weaknesses. That doesn't mean that you ignore workouts that play to your strengths, but just that you should have a well rounded training approach, even if some of the workouts involved in that aren't the most enjoyable. For me, that means adding in work at faster paces, all the way down to 1500 race pace. I also hope to be more diligent about doing strides to continue to get back in touch with my basic speed. I had decent footspeed in college but have lost quite a bit of it as I have focused mainly on tempo runs and longer intervals.

Monday
70 minutes
Tuesday
40 minute run to the South Boston track, 6 laps of jogging the turns and striding out the straights, continued running to 100 minutes
Wednesday
35 minute warm up to the Milton Academy track, 2 X 1200, 800, 2 x 1200 w/ 400 jog rest in 2 minutes (3:50, 3:52, 2:31, 3:45, 3:43), cool down to 100 minutes
Thursday
30 minutes
Friday
AM: 30 minutes
PM: 80 minutes
Saturday
50 minute warm up, 7 mile tempo in 36:31, cool down to 120 minutes
Sunday
80 minutes, 6 x 25 second stride with full walking recovery
Total
620 minutes on 8 runs (just under 90 miles)

Holler of the Week
I had a few decent hollers this past week. One guy asked me to run a mile for him, which I thought was sort of unusual. The interaction below happened towards the end of a dark, cold, rainy run. It cracked me up and left me feeling pretty tough.

"How long you been runnin'?"
"About 12 miles."
"For real, yo?"
"Yeah"
"Damn...you da MAN, yo."

My favorite of the week by far was when a woman yelled to me "I know you can't be the 5 - 0 in shorts like that!"

Epiphany Story of the Week
We had the Nativity/San Miguel Science Fair on Tuesday and Epiphany students took first and third place in the competition. It was a lot of fun going to UMass Boston with the top three finishers from our school science fair and watching them present on their projects. The science fair was the bane of my existence for a solid two weeks, but this event was a nice way to be done with it and see that all of the time devoted to the science fair resulted in some very high quality work.
I am home in Baltimore as I type this and will head to DC tomorrow to meet up with the 8th graders from school to help chaperone their trip for a week. I am sure there will be many stories that will make this section more exciting next time around.

Song of the Week
The new album by The Thermal came out this past week and I absolutely love it. I have easily listened to it 20 times in the past five days (short album + lots of train time = 4 listens per day) but my song of the week does not come from that album. I am seeing them in concert in early May, so look for a song then. For now, check out Airstream Driver by Gomez.