Grass Mountain: Man vs. Bike (ok Man vs Man on Bike)

Clay and I went out to Grass Mountain this morning. The workout was a little different today. I have never run straight up the 2.7 mile climb, we always do it in an interval format. Today I decided I would see how long it would take me to run the whole way. We set it up as a race with me running and Clay on his mountain bike. He has biked to the top in around 23 minutes and I had reached the top in a 1 min run / 1 min power hike format in a total of 25:20. I figured I could probably run it about 1-2 min faster with steady running and thought we might be close at the finish.

We ran once up together on our usual interval format with Clay setting the pace. We reached the top in just over 28 minutes, jogged slowly down, refueled, and then Clay switched to the bike for the head to head matchup. I took the lead for the first 3/4 mile but Clay quickly caught me and created a nice lead as the hill levels out in the middle. The last half of the run was me trying to catch him on the steepest part of the hill. Every time I turned a corner I could see him ahead and I didn't appear to be gaining any ground. He finished about 1 minute ahead of me and my time was 23:20, 2 minutes faster than my interval format time. Average pace was 8:37. It was an all out effort for both of us as Clay beat his previous time by a full minute.

I hit the mile mark at just under 8:00, was at mile 2 at 16:30 (8:30 mile) and then it took me 7:00 to run the last .7 of a mile (which is 10 min pace). It really gets steep toward the end (averages about 15% grade). 6 mph at a 15% grade is equivalent to 5 min/mile effort on Jack Daniels, PhD treadmill grade effort chart.

It took 2.5 minutes to reach my steady heart rate of 170-174 and I maintained it for the duration of the run. With an approximate max HR of 190 this would be about 90% of my max or a threshold run, with a cool down back down the mountain.

Total mileage for the day was 11 miles.



I have found some pretty good info online this week that I would like to share.

First Runners World listed schools that offer marathon training classes here.

I found two great quotes in a Perform Better magazine.
The first is: "Any trainer/coach can make an athlete tired. But not every trainer/coach knows how to mae them better" - Brian Grasso, YCS.
He has a great website here with some interesting articles about training kids at various developmental stages. He lists 4 sports that he feels every pre-teen child should participate in to develop in to a well rounded athlete. Can you guess which 4 sports ...................................soccer, swimming, martial arts, and gymnastics. You can read his reasoning here.

The second quote is: "It is absolutely possible to add fitness to dysfunction, but that doesn't make it right." - Gray Cook, MSPT, OCS, CSCS
This is what sets a Physical Therapist apart from ATC's and trainers. We correct the dysfunction and add stregnth on top of that. Check out Gray Cook's website here.

The last great info pieces that I found were video clips of a coaching seminar where Pat Tyson (Mead HS and now Univ. Kentucky coach), Terrence Mahon (coach of Deena Kastor & Ryan Hall), and Juli Henner (Georgetown Univ. coach) discuss CORE TRAINING and SUPPLIMENTAL VARIATION. Terrence has the best commentary and both videos below are worth a watch (about 8 min each). Terrance has a great definition of core training and really GETS IT. They also talk about becoming and ATHLETE and not just a RUNNER.