Week 10 Summary- Race Report

For week 10 I hit a total of 16 hours training with 42 miles running, 50 miles biking, and 12,100 yards swimming. I had planned to back down this week after two big weeks over break. In addition to the miles and yards I lifted, did speed drills and strides three times, lunges and plyometrics twice, and core work five times. On Friday, January 9 I raced for the first time since Thanksgiving. I ran the 2,000 meters at a track meet at Augustana College. The 2,000 is a rare racing distance. That is 1.25 miles. I hoped to be about 5:00 through the mile with a finish time around 6:15. When the gun went off I settled in behind 4 Augie runners and what felt like a pretty comfortable pace was probably too fast for me. We hit the 1/2 mile mark at 2:23. I slowed down a bit the next half and came through the mile just under my goal time at 4:56. I thought I was tired but in the last 400 I was able to pick the pace back up and finish it off with a 73 second last 400 for a finishing time of 6:09. I was very pleased with this first race. I hope to continue to lose weight and increase my fitness over the next couple weeks when I will be racing an indoor triathlon at the Muscatine YMCA. On February 14th I'll hit the track again for another race at Augustana. This time I will run the 3,000 meters and hope to run around 9:20 which would be equivilant to just under 10:00 for two miles.

My favorite workout of the week was my weekly long run on Sunday. I was joined by Austin O'Brien, who I coached at PV, and by my summer training partner Stephan Marsh who I've enjoyed training with through his law school break. This was supposed to be my first run of 75 minutes. I've been increasing the long run by 5 minutes every two weeks. We did last week's 70 minute route but found a spot where we thought we would be adding on 5 minutes. It turned out our detour was much longer and the run went on for 90 minutes. Surprisingly it still felt good despite being nearly 13 miles and the longest run I think I've done in over six years. This week I hope to increase my weekly running mileage to 55 and get more interval training on the bike which I have neglected the past couple weeks. In evaluating the first race I know I'm well on my way to running the kind of times I'll need to in order to place high at the Elite Amateur races this summer. Thanks for reading. DREAM BIG!