running my age

It's been almost a year since the last post. I've done 1L, gotten completely out of shape, rounded into some kind of shape again, then stagnated. Last night I raced a mile on a dirt track, which I organized after having read The Perfect Mile, the story of Bannister and Landy and the four minute mile. I ran 5:10. Which may sound pretty fast, and it is if you don't run much, but of course next to Landy and Bannister (and don't forget Rich Ferguson, the Canadian who finished third in that famous Empire Games race), it is quite slow. It's also quite slow compared to what I could do, even at the peak of a mediocre career. I've run around 4:30 before, and 4:09 for 1500 (I was even 4:14 for 1500 last summer) so for whatever reason, what I'm doing now is just not working. Despite the fact that an analysis of my training seems to indicate the need for more fast workouts, having done some decent workouts this summer and having only a 5:10 to show for it is disappointing.

All of this is of course under the guise of "retirement" which basically means I can do what I want and not really have to answer to myself (or anyone) because, hey, I'm retired! Well, I think that I need to go back to what was working and making me very fit in the past, that is, a focus on volume, not on quality. If anything, I need a focus on volume before the quality can really do me any good anyway, so that is what I'll try.

My goal is to run my age for 10k by the end of 2009. That essentially means get back to almost PB shape. I turn 31 on Friday, which means I'll be 32 by the fall of 2009. So I should be able to run my age by then. I'll spend the fall trying to get in just about 60miles a week, with a tempo and a fartlek thrown in each week. In the winter, I'll do the bubble training (if that works out) with Concordia, and in the spring I'll start into a steady rotation of workouts. The spring plan is to rotate through mile, 5k, and 10k paced intervals, every two days, with a long run of 90min including 15-30min of tempo each weekend. That should provide enough quality. But before I do that, I'll want to be consistent at about 60miles over the fall and early winter (mostly to make sure I can get school done, and focus on coaching in the fall). Next summer I'll be working, hopefully, so I'll have a pretty strict schedule. That should be good, since clearly having my days to myself has not yielded any fruit!

Today I ran 65min easy with 10min of core. The goal is to do this well: keep the core going, and stretch, etc. Hopefully that will make up for the extra 10-20 miles a week I'm not running, and the fact that I'm old now...