10k aqeuduct time trial (37:33)

One of the reasons that I developed a love of running in school was that I enjoyed crunching the numbers. I have always broken down workouts and races, taken splits, predicted times. I love disecting a race to find out where I can improve. I am a numbers guy.

After my run this morning I told Andi that I was less than a minute off my 10k PR! She said, "How do you remember that," and I said, "it's what I do."

So here is a disection of my time trial this morning. I arrived at 5:40 and did a good 10 minute warm up. I wore my addidas tempos (a performance stability shoe). Clay met me at 60th and the aqueduct at 6:00am and he paced me on the bike. We went south so we would have no gates to cross and could just run hard the whole way. It was little windy up there which was a cross wind most of the way but a head wind at some parts on the way back. I had to dig down deep to grind out the last 2 miles (mental toughness).

Here are the mile splits:
6:19
6:06
6:08
6:02
5:57
5:50

First 3 miles 18:33, second 3 miles 17:50.

I don't think I could have paced that any better. If I had dropped a 5:50 earlier in the run it might have been too much to maintain. I hit the 5k in 19:10 and came back in 18:23! I ran an open 5k in 18:20 last year! Total time was 37:33 (avg pace 6:03). My PR is 36:36 on a downhill road race in 1997 before I left for college. I honestly have not raced many 10ks in my life.

VDOT for my time today is 55.9 and predicts a marathon of 2:53:25! I would say I am on pace with my training. The VDOT calculator gives me training paces of 5:45 for intervals and 6:15 for threshold runs. I was hoping for 38:30 today and ran a minute faster. Thanks to Clay for pacing me on the bike. It helps so much to have someone just a half step ahead to try and keep up with and draft off of.

I weighed myself after the run...167.

I may do another time trial in 6 weeks or so. We'll see how the training progresses. I plan on starting a weekly interval session for the next 6 weeks. I need to start practicing what I preach.


There have been great performances at the Track & Field World Championships this weekend. In the morning you can get a live web feed at Universal Sports. Dathan Ritzenhein was 6th in the 10k and also negative splitted (he ran 13:50 and 13:30). See his interview here.

Jenny Barringer was 5th in the women's steeplechase and she also has an excellent interview here. She has an amazing love of the sport. After her race she says, "cross country starts today!" She red-shirted last year to train for the Olympics.

Local Quartz Hill High School graduate Michelle Perry did not make it out of the first round of the 100m hurdles but raced with a pretty serious knee injury. See her interview here.

Check out World T&F results here.


Finally, a Hansons/Brooks athlete Clint Verran (2:14 marathoner and physical therapist) had surgery on his hip this past week. My P.T. readers might get more out of this one.
Here is his pre-op post.
Here is his post-op post.

Here is an interesting article on Kara Goucher and her training with Alberto Salazar.

Easy mileage the rest of the week and the weekend.