Saturday, March 28, 2009

Week 10: 8-mile OYO run

Most of our Saturday runs are on flat terrain. But the Seattle RnR marathon has a course that looks like a Stock chart. Miles 5 to 6 and 14 through 18 has "ups" that can go from 0 to 250 feet in as little as 1/2 mile. I wanted to simulate that this weekend. In Evergreen area, there are roads (Quimby between Ruby and Rue Mirassou for one) that have this kind of elevation gain. I plotted a 4 mile route and ran it twice (once clockwise and once anti-clockwise just to reverse the ups and downs) for a total of 8 miles. Though I did the Capitola run at a reasonable 11 min mile pace for 12 miles, I was able to run the 8 miles only at 12 min mile pace. As long as I am adding the miles, I aint complainin' :-)


Peace,
Sai

Week 10: A week of consistent workouts

As I mentioned in my last blog, from this week, I am upping the number from 4 workouts per week to 5 workouts per week. I am trying a couple of items and would stick to the one that works best. The constraints I am working under are
  • I cannot do weights on legs on Wednesdays and Fridays (because of the Thursday tracks and Saturday long runs - can't afford to tear a muscle and not getting healed by Thurs/Sat routines).
  • I have to do X-training for 3 days a week and run 3 days a week. But I am hitting the gym only 5 days a week. will bump it to 6 days a week in May and June
  • I have to incorporate core training, weights and back strengthening in this course to run 26 miles
This is almost like the GRE Analts question. What should I do on each day to optimize my training ? I will try to keep you posted on the actual routines next week.

BTW, instead of the coach's workout on Thursday, we met @ Foothill college on Monday. The routine was a little different. All teams (Marathon, Hiking, triathlon, cycling) from South bay were represented at the venue and we were given an opportunity to do the workouts they do regularly. Also, we heard from a Stanford researcher, whose research is funded by the LLS, who is devising customized cancer drugs based on individual screening. If I abstract the heck out of it, what he mentioned is very similar to the Deep packet inspection (DPI) in Computer Networking (the field in which I have some knowledge about). Classify, police, target and Act. He is doing his work at the molecular level and trying to cure cancer but the concept from a 50K feet view seemed to be similar.

Peace
sai