Aug 18, 2009

Biking and Mile Repeats Revisited

Last week Kaori learned to ride her bike without her training wheels. Yes it is a little bit late since she is six years old and entering first grade this Fall. However when we lived in Tokyo it was just tow crowded with automobile and pedestrian traffic for her to ride a bike very much. So she's really only been riding for about one year. This Spring we started riding with just two wheels but after one minor wreck we shelved that idea for a couple months. Then last week it just clicked for her and off she went. That first day Cole and her mom offered her $1 to keep going, making more and longer passes in front of our house (how sad is it that I entered the mile in my training log that I ran with her?). When it came to my turn to bribe her I didn't do it. I wanted to end on a positive note and so we finished the session. Now she is pushing for family bike rides and riding all over the neighborhood.

I was kind of tired and sluggish this morning and lacking any sort of motivation. I started thinking about what I commented to another blogger that sometimes low motivation could signal a need for more rest. Still I decided to get out and run but I used the same strategy with myself that I had used on Kaori, give myself a positive experience. I decided to couple that with some mile repeats because I've been eager to redeem myself on those after my bad experience last week. So I gave myself a moderate goal of 4x1 mile in the 6:40's. I know, a little slow but I still think that should provide a pretty good stimulus since it is about 30 seconds faster per mile than my planned marathon pace. I ended up doing 5 from 6:41-6:45 and in doing so I left the track with a satisfied feeling. All in: 10 miles in about 81 minutes.

P.S. Both Yasso and McMillan only mention doing up to 5 mile repeats for marathon training. I would have expected more but I guess I'm doing enough distance with those.

4 comments:

Jason said...

Sounds like the mile repeats went really well. I hope that motivation sticks with you. The pain I am running with is in my heel. It is very sensitive to the touch right on the back. It hurts in the morning and at the beginning of my run then goes away. Right now it is tolerable. I have also been dealing with a lot of achiness in my leg from just below my knee to my hip. It seems like it is mostly muscle but it is kind of all over. Fortunately it does not bother me while I am running but can be pretty uncomfortable at other times. I love to run pain free but it just does not seem to happen very often.

Lindsay said...

nice job on the repeats! too funny about logging mileage from the bike-training, i probably would've done the same :)

good to know about 5-repeats being sufficient. i think i got up to 7 or 8 in my last plan (that i created myself, not based on anyone's instruction or theory).

Glenn Jones said...

Man - you think tha 6:40 for a mile is slow? If you do, let me see your Olympic medals (just kidding). 6:40 is pretty dang fast! Even when I was a strapping young'un with 60 fewer pounds I could never go better than a 6:15!

Thanks for stopping by my blog yesterday and thanks for the encouragement! It nice to run into new runners - even if it is just virtual at this point.

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