Sunday, February 5, 2012

This Sat. we took on the hills at Dodger Stadium and the surrounding Elysian Park.  The weather was cool, clear and with a slight breeze now and then, turned out near perfect for this tough day.  We had 40 runners at the start and saw a few folks we haven't seen for a while, which was great.



The route we ran is essentially the 5K route for the LA Marathon, and it's a tough one.  There were a series of at least 5 significant hills and long grades, and we did the loop three times.  The total distance was just under 10 miles, but the Coach wanted us to really work the uphill sections and ease off on the downhills and the flats, plus he wanted us to push our pace 20 seconds quicker on the uphills.  I thought that would be fine for the full running groups, and that we would definitely work our hill sections, but there was no way we were going to go to push that much going up hill. I was also planning to do some 1/1s on some of the tougher sections, but as it turned out, the group was going very strong, and we stayed with our  2/1 pace throughout.  I think we threw in one extra minute on one of our walks after a really tough steep section, and we did take our usual 2min. GU breaks, but we did push our pace during the run sections and tried to ease off a bit on the downhills and flats.


Ultimately, we came in with an astounding 14:40 avg pace for the entire three laps.  I know a few folks did not complete the full three laps, which is fine, we'll all have a chance to do it again in a few weeks.  I also know that it was a tough workout, just like last weeks fast 13 miler, but this is all part of the training as we come to our last several weeks. There are definite hills throughout the marathon course, and it's good to work out on them and get over any qualms which we may have facing them.  This Sat. we totally took on those hills and we came out confident and strong.



We'll need this momentum heading into next weeks 20 miler run.  We'll be doing the 20 as our longest distance for this training season, and we'll start our tapering process with shorter runs after that.  We will not be pushing the pace for this 20, and we'll just be working on long distance endurance.  




Afterwords a group of folks dropped by for our post run brunch at my office.  Much thanks to the PLs for supplying the food, Joel for all the sausage, and for all those who helped in the cooking and cleaning up after.  We be doing this again after the next Dodger session, so come on by.

Have a great week, and keep up the great work,
Walt


1 comment:

  1. So cool to read about how you and your group are doing! Really exciting to see how many miles you all are doing and how great you are doing on the hills! Congrats to you, your PLs and your whole team! Can't wait to see you on M day in March!

    Ed

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