Speedwork 1/5/2008

All I had to do this morning was 7 miles. Yipee! That's a good start already. It was a little chilly this morning but I was ready to go. Basically I was going to do a fartlek where I would start with 5 minutes of medium effort and then 5 minutes jogging, 4 minutes medium and 4 minutes easy and so on and so forth. I warmed up for 2 miles and then changed my shoes and got ready to go.

I started my run and was shooting between 5:45-5:55. So I was running and in the middle of my run I looked down and I noticed the display was not showing how fast I was going. I quickly realized that since lap 1 would be shorter than a mile that my Garmin would not be showing my speed. Darn! Well anyway this would be my opportunity to run by feel. Man, I hate that. I get the "Speed Up" beep so I sped up and I end up running a 5:54 pace for the first split. The second fartlek was 4 minutes long and I ended up running a 5:53. Not bad, for listening for beeps and not looking at my rate of speed. My concern is not really about running too slow. My concern is about running too fast and expending too much energy. So I finish fartlek 4 and start on fartlek 3 and by the time I finish this fartlek I whip off a 5:44. My legs are warming up now but I just need to watch for going too fast unintentionally. The 2 minute fartlek was just too too easy, I just whipped out 5:49. The 1 minute fartlek was a 5:46.

• 5 minutes - 5:54 pace
• 4 minutes - 5:53 pace
• 3 minutes - 5:44 pace
• 2 minutes - 5:49 pace
• 1 minute - 5:46 pace

At the end of my run the top part of my hamstring, the part close to the gluteus was tight(I'll let the anatomy expert correct me if they can). I have been getting this feeling for the past few weeks sporadically. Sometimes I would even get this when I was running slowly! I was thinking about this issue this evening and the only thing I could come up with is maybe there is an imbalance of strength in my legs. I think my quads and gluteus might be too strong for my hamstrings. So tonight I put a 20 pound dumbbell in my gym bag and started doing leg extensions. I did 3 sets of 10 to start out. I'll probably build on this in the days to come.

Looking back on my workout, I pretty much completed the workout with very little effort at all. It was just an opportunity to run a little faster than usual. But since I didn't have my rate of speed on the display, I felt I might have expended a tad bit more energy than I would have liked(I would have liked to run all 5:5x's). I will have to wait and see if I choose to do a workout Wednesday. Hopefully this hamstring issue will be resolved with the new leg extension exercises.