A Quick Half Indeed

This Sat. we had a great group of 30 runners, which included a few alumni, who joined back in, just for the fun of it.  We were asked to push the group a bit this weekend, to go for full marathon race pace, and we did.

What this means is that RW5 is designed to do a 2/1 interval, 2 run/1walk, and we are training for a 15min/mile average.  This translates to a 6:30-6:45 hour finish for the 26.2 mile marathon.  We've been pretty much doing close to that all season, but on Sat. we pushed it a bit just to see how ready our group was, and the group did even better.

We covered the 13.1 miles with an average pace of a 14.46 min/mile, and this included the entire hill up to San Vicente and 26th...totally amazing.  Check the link below to see the stats from Jamie's Garmin watch.  The fun part is to click on "Play" and you can see the interactive playback of our entire run, including distance, speed, and elevation.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/145322648#.TyRxBVMyR40.email

What this means is that all the training we've been going through is paying off, and we are right on target to be ready for the marathon.  Now, if for any multitude of reasons you missed our 18 miler, and even Sat. run, you are not totally out of the game.  We all have to really hunker down these next few weeks and keep up with our week day training runs.  We can't lose sight of our goal.  Minimum is to go out two days a week, ideally by now you should be able to handle three days of training, of which I know that one of those will be a slightly easier day, and remember not to workout on Friday.  We have to maintain the level of performance, but not to the point of burning ourselves out.  Listen to your body, and if you need to recover, please do, but don't get lazy either.  You have to do the work to deserve the recovery.

I've been meaning to include this link, which was sent to me from Claudia, one of our veteran runners, and it's a great motivational talk and part of the TED talks.  TED started as an annual conference consisting of a series of presentations and talks by people from Technology, Entertainment, and Design.  It has grown to a global series of conferences and I've been fortunate to attend several of these in the past years.  If this one intrigues you, please check out the rest of the talks...most of very interesting and provocative.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Lp7E973zozc

Next week, we'll be doing the first of two Dodger Stadium sessions.  This means we'll all meet at Dodger stadium and do two laps of the 5k (3.1mile) course.  This will take us into the hills around the stadium and Elysian park.  It's very scenic and hilly, but I am confident our group is ready to meet this challenge also.  So, keep up the great work this week, and I'll be sending details in the next email this coming week.

Walt