Chapter 2 page 337 - TR 119 & 120 take 2

It's Thursday so that means (announcer's voice) Spring Into Training (echo echo echo).  "C" and I met to do our 3 mile speed training (it's our first speed training session - EVER!) before we had to meet up with the training program participants.  Although it was cooler today, it was by no means COOL (it's only June 9th - yikes, I'm melting already!!!).  I digress, I've been reading a lot about the importance of cadence, in particular, how having 180 strides per minute can improve form, reduce injury, and create faster running.  You can look up songs to download to your ipod that are either 90 or 180 bpm, but I'm not much of a music listener so I opted to purchase a metronome from amazon for only $16.  It's not your old piano lesson metronome - nope, it's for runners.  Check it out -

We set it for 180 bpm and had the volume set to a 3 and used a 2 tone beeping (one tone for your left foot hitting the ground and a different tone for your right foot hitting the ground).  We went 1/2 mile . . .anyone want to guess how fast we did that 1/2 mile in?????  Okay, I'll wait - throw out your guesses, I'm listening!

5:06

Rock star right???  For those of you who don't know - that's like 4 minutes/mile faster than I normally run - it's 3 minutes/mile faster than my 5K PR.  Now, we only did that for 1/2 mile today, but it was our first speed training session and it felt pretty amazing!  It was hard, but not impossible.  I certainly don't want to do a full hour of it, but for now - I'm thinking it was a solid performance (and "C" didn't hate it either!).  Woot woot for our first speed training session!!!!   We completed our 3 mile training with walking a mile then doing our new 2:20 & 2 interval.  All in all, it was a pretty good session - I'm kind of looking forward to our next speed training (kind of!!!!).  

Immediately after we finished, we drove to meet up with the Spring Training participants.  These people amaze me week after week.  They have all come so far that they can't believe it!!!!  It's truly a joy to see.  For training sessions, the group is broken up into 3 ability groups.  The runners went 4 miles and they impress me so much!  They are fast and strong and committed to pushing their own limits - I'm in awe!!!  Then the largest group is what I call an interval group.  These people never ran before this program (for the most part) and never dreamed they would run and go more than a mile or so.  This group started off 7 weeks ago doing :15 sec run and 2:30 walk and have slowly and steadily increased their running while decreasing their walking along with increasing their distance.  Tonight, "C" led this group and they went 3.75 miles (WOW! SO impressive!!!!!) and they did a 1:00 run and 2:00 walk.  I led the walking group.  These people (for the most part) had not gone more than a mile in their lifetime and never wanted to run a single step.  Tonight we went 2.75 miles and did 12 intervals using fixed point (walk fast/run to that sign or that tree).  They were outstanding!!!  Seriously - this walking group surprised themselves!!!!  They were happy when I said they had one last interval to do for the rest of the program - next week is the last week and we'll be taking a 2.25 mile recovery walk together as a large group.  

So poor "C" - she did a total of almost 7 miles tonight while I did only about 5 miles.  No matter what, though, we had a GREAT time and asking around, all the participants enjoyed themselves as well.  Hooray!!!