4 mile tempo; 10 total

Be flexible. Listen to your body. Know when to call it a day. Train smart.

Those are my words of wisdom for the day and I used them all this morning. When I went to bed last night I thought, "I think I'll do a 10 mile tempo run tomorrow." When I woke up I decided, "10 is too long. I will warm up to the aqueduct, do 6 miles tempo, and cool down coming home." That is what I started to do. I warmed up 2 miles to the aqueduct, them headed east for 3 miles. I thought I should be able to hit 6:20s or so but every time I looked down at my watch it was saying 6:40-6:50. The effort level was way harder than I wanted it to be. It felt like 10k pace but it was really closer to goal marathon pace. It was getting harder and harder to maintain pace. Then the plan started to change. "I'll call it after 5," I thought, but that forth mile was pretty tough and I decided to call it a day there. I have done this type of run enough that I can feel my form struggling. It is at that point that I call the workout for the day. So the plan started out at 10 miles of tempo and ended as 4. My tempo splits were 6:40, 6:38, 6:31, 6:30.


There was a lot of great races going on today.

The USATF cross country national championships was in San Diego this morning. Justin Patananan from Palmdale, CA competed in the men's open division 12k and was 56th with a time of 40:32. Congrats Justin! The women's race was stacked with Shalane Flanagan defending her title. The US Women should have a great team at Worlds. See results here.

The New Balance Indoor Grand Prix was also today and all the hype was on high school runner Lukas Verzbicas who was running the elite mile. He was hoping to break 4 minutes but came up short running 4:03 (3rd fastest HS indoor mile ever). See his interview here. The kid has an amazing ability to deal with all the attention and media. He gives a great interview, has an awesome attitude, and a very bright future (at Oregon for the next 4 years).

Coach Jay Johnson out of Boulder, CO has had some great blog posts lately. The comments from other coaches are almost as good. They are both worth a read.
The first is "Winter training for college runners," which really relates to anyone not just collegiates.
The second is "The kids are alright," which discusses training younger runners. I especially like the 6 points at the end, and can't agree more with #6! It is so good that I am going to quote it here.
"6. Finally, if one were reading this blog in 1950′s America then I would argue something different, because I could assume that the 12-16 year old kids had more running, jumping, climbing, playing in their background. In 2011 we’re naive to assume that kids have done any significant amount of physical play, let alone physical work. You have to keep this in mind when you read Lydaird or you read about Ryan and Lindgren’s high school training."

I think you can benefit this generation of kids more in the long run by doing almost equal general strengthening to running for their training. Squat, jump, climb, pull, push, throw, lift, balance. When I was at the USATF coaching clinic one of the instructors asked us, "How many of you have ever climbed a tree?" About half, if not more of us raised our hands. He then said, "If you asked this to a bunch of high schoolers these days, you would only get about 10% raising their hands." That is sad.


Good luck to everyone running the Surf City Marathon tomorrow. If you are reading this before you race then you stayed up too late!