The Life

I read an interesting article in the latest Canadian Running magazine about a training camp in Kenya. The article describes lots of good stuff about the running culture there, and it's amazing how blissed-out it all sounds. They wake and run. Then they eat. Then in the afternoon, they run again. Then they eat a lot. Then they nap. Then when evening comes, they run again. Then eat. Then lots of sleep.

Run-eat-sleep.

Part of me thinks living like that would be crazy – but most of me thinks it would be awesome. And it has inspired me to think about experimenting with two-a-days. The article talks about how splitting the miles up throughout the day is the best way to push mileage without killing your legs. I find that I don’t like doing more than 15k in one run on an easy day, so if I want to push my mileage, the only sane and safe way to do it would be to add in a second short easy run.

It’s food for thought.

On Wednesday, I was back on the track. Even though I’d pretty much melted down last Tuesday, Cliff wanted me to be aggressive. He put me with Tyler and Asaf and told us to run 2min - 2min rest - 1min – 1 min rest – 30s – 30s rest – 2min and so forth for 6 sets of 2-1-30. Sounds okay, right? Sure. But he told us to run them at 5:00min/mile pace (75s lap pace). And, of course, we started out at a pace way too fast. I didn’t bother checking my watch much because only the 2minuters got us a full lap, but on the second 2min, we went through the lap in 72s (3:00/k pace). Yikes. It was a very tough slog, and I’m not sure I was holding the pace by the end, but I got through it and felt way better than last Tuesday.

The key to that kind of workout is pace control – something the three of us weren’t good at. You could pretty much fake the 1min and 30s intervals, but there was no hiding for the 2min ones, especially because they came after only 30s rest – and if you went too hard in the 30s run, you were doomed. The run was all about feeling out the pace and being fast without pushing.

So today Alex and I ran recovery: slow pace for only 35min. Things are feeling good. I’ll take tomorrow off and await whatever Cliff dishes up on Saturday.