Training Log Archive: jfredrickson

A real rest day, but not planned. I had to take Sophie to a horse show early this morning, so with getting to bed late after the night-o I didn't get much sleep. I decided to take a nap in the afternoon after we got back from the horse show and I ended up sleeping until 6:30 and woke up starving so decided to go to dinner instead of running. Could have used an easy run today, but it's not too bad to have a day off. It should give me more strength on the intervals tomorrow so hopefully I can get more out of them.

Event: UNO Camping Weekend
 

Warm-up jog for the race. Feeling pretty good.

Race at a park near Connecticut College in New London, CT. Felt great going out and ran 5:30 without too much effort, but couldn't seem to hold onto that pace. We ran through a marsh in the 2nd and 4th miles and it was pretty nasty and muddy, and everyone slowed down in there. I was able to pick it up again on the third mile, but after the second time through the marsh I started to cramp up, just when I was starting to try to push the pace again and that pretty much killed my race.

My goal was to not run any miles over 6 minute pace, but the swamp killed that. I also wanted to hit 29:30, but I was so slow in the last mile due to my cramp that I couldn't get it. The weird thing is that I still managed to run 5:49 on the last mile but I really felt like I wasn't running that hard. Who knows though...

Anyway, it was definitely a PR (previous best on 5 miles was 30:30) so not a bad way to start the season. Should leave room for improvement.

Here are my mile splits:

1.) 5:32
2.) 6:12
3.) 5:50
4.) 6:32
5.) 5:49

Cool-down run after the race. Felt pretty tired at first, but much better towards the end.

Here are results from today's race. Looks like I placed 230 out of 388. Top half would have been nice... Not bad though considering most of the schools were Division 1.

Well this was definitely the hardest Night-O I have ever done, and I don't think it will be easy to beat. It was a blast though. You had to be extremely slow and careful, picking off just about every boulder along the way and sometimes going out of your way to hit big features. It was a great experience though to have to be that exact. There were a couple times when things didn't look quite right so I spent some time figuring out exactly where I was even though I had a pretty good idea. In the day time I would have just kept running and relocated as I went, but at night this was impossible. It was really good for me to do that because I sometimes get myself into trouble when I don't stop soon enough when I sense a mistake.

I was really solid (other than some stops to figure things out) until the last control when I started to get a little sloppy and kept running despite not feeling right about the terrain. When I realized that I wasn't really sure about where I was I decided to bail out to a trail right away and relocate. That seemed to work, but it would have been nice to not have to do that.

Anyway, it was great training and a lot of fun. Although the woods did feel a bit spooky at times :)

World's Hardest Night-O: Blue - Splits

Short, easy run with the team just to loosen up before tomorrow's race. Essentially a rest day.

Legs felt a little tired from the tough week, but should be ready to run hard tomorrow. I am excited to see what kind of time I will run. It is supposed to be a fast course.

C • Good Luck!! 2

Thank god for Thursdays! No classes today so I slept all morning. Finally got caught up. My legs are feeling pretty nice too. I think there is something behind this sleep/recovery connection :) Looking forward to a nice long run today on the Rail Trail. It will be wonderful to get off-road again.

Went to the Rail Trail today during practice. It was great to get off-road and do some trail running. Legs felt tired, but otherwise pretty good. With a nice easy day tomorrow I should be ready to race on Saturday. It will be interesting to see what kind of time I am able to run.

I just took a breeze through my log from around this time last year and found some interval training. We did 6 800m intervals and I averaged 2:45 on them.

Now I didn't run 800m intervals yesterday, but I averaged 5:20 on the mile repeats, and that sounds considerably faster. Also, I didn't feel like I was pushing that hard yesterday, but in my log from a year ago it sounds like I was hurting pretty bad on the workout.

It's good to see that this training stuff seems to have had some effect :)

Almost a good nights sleep tonight, but still not quite enough to recover from the past two nights. Got to bed at a decent hour but some crazy person in the athletic department decided to schedule our annual sports team contract signing at 8am so that kind of killed my plans to sleep in...

I was still feeling really sore from Monday's hill workout and yesterday's long run so I decided to go for a short run before practice today to try to loosen up a bit for the workout. Felt pretty tired.

Warmup run to Elm Park for a workout.

Ran five 1-mile repeats at Elm Park. The idea was to get used to our race pace and to try to stick to it for each mile. My best time on 5 miles last year was 30:30 so I thought that I would try for 6 minutes and see if I could hold onto that.

Well I went out fairly easy and hit 2:35 at the half-mile. For some reason I was thinking I needed to be at 2:30 so I sped up a bit until I remembered that half of 6 is actually 3, so then I slowed down again and came in at 5:28. That felt nice and easy so I decided to try to stay under 5:30 for the rest of them. I ended up running negative splits on each one though and was feeling so good that I decided to go for my PR on the last one. So I busted out a 5:05 on the last one breaking my former mile PR by 4 seconds! It's kind of funny to get a PR at the end of an interval workout but it was cool anyway. It would have been cool to go under 5 since I have been wanting to do that for a long time, but that wasn't really the goal today. Now I am interested to see what I can actually do on a mile on the track. I think I ran a 5:20 in the spring at the Junior Training Camp. Somehow I think I am a little faster now.

Anyway, here are my splits:

1.) 5:28
r.) 3:52
2.) 5:25
r.) 4:00
3.) 5:24
r.) 4:07
4.) 5:22
r.) 3:46
5.) 5:05

It was nice to feel so good on the intervals since I had been feeling so tired in the warmup run. I think that I should have probably done them a little faster because I didn't really feel like I was pushing that hard until the last one. Next time I'll aim for 5:15. It still felt like a good workout though and I am pretty tired now.

C • Sweet workout! 5

Cool-down jog back to the Dolan. Thought about going longer, but was feeling pretty tired. Had a good workout, and already did extra before practice, so no need to go any longer. If I am still feeling good tomorrow I'll do Airport Long again.

Ugh, Tuesdays suck. I have class from 10:40am to 9:30pm with only 1 break long enough to get a run in. I managed to do Airport Long and just barely got to my last class in time. I'll have to be sure to not waste any time getting out to run in my break otherwise it's going to be too easy to end up missing some Tuesdays for no good reason.

I took it nice and easy since yesterday was a hard workout and tomorrow is another workout day. Surprisingly my legs felt pretty decent. I was pretty brain dead from only 3 hours of sleep (getting up at 10:30 is harder than it sounds when you are up all night), but my legs felt much more recovered from yesterday's workout than I was expecting. If I can just get a good night's sleep tonight I should be ready for another tough workout tomorrow.

C • wow that is a long day!!! how ... 3

Ok, I've been thinking a lot about how I need to make sure that I get enough sleep this semester but I haven't gotten off to a great start. I have been feeling great physically lately so I feel that I am ready to push it pretty hard this fall. But that will only be possible if I get enough rest between workouts otherwise I am going to find myself getting exhausted for no good reason and missing quality training.

Now is the time to get more disciplined about my sleep, and that means that I have to get more disciplined in my schedule in general. Maybe I need some time off from all the extra design work I have been doing until I can get back into the school rhythm...

C • Sleep 2

Easy warm-up jog over to Elephant Hill for some hill intervals. Was up all night working on the new US Team website and didn't get to sleep until 8:30. I slept until 3:45 in the afternoon though, so I got a decent amount of sleep, but wasn't really prepared for practice at 4. Ate a donut and a GU and seemed to feel pretty good anyway though.

Ran 7 hill intervals on Elephant hill. We had a bit of a jog down and around, and we took it at a fairly decent pace so it was hard to keep the early pace on the hills but it was a great workout anyway. I ran away from T-Mac and Dan after the 4th one, and T-Mac skipped the 6th and joined me again on the 7th looking pretty fresh. I had to really kick it out to beat him up on the 7th and my legs felt like jelly at the top so I realized that was probably all I had left.

It was nice to really kick it out at the end since I was starting to feel like it was just a long hill run and not real intervals, but I think it ended up being a pretty good workout. I just hope we do more speed work on Wednesday because that is what I am going to need for the Sprint Series Finals.

I was really excited to discover this hill though. I had heard about Elephant Hill before, but we never ran it last year, so this was my first time on it. It is a perfect grassy incline that is just the right steepness and distance. It definitely feels good to be doing a hill workout and not the long road runs. My legs feel like they have had a great workout, and not just an hour of abuse. Instead of hurting, they are burning in a good way. I really need to find more off-road routes...

C • "just the right steepness and distance" 2

Cool-down jog back to the Dolan. Still hadn't quite recovered from the last interval so I was hurting for most of it. Felt decent again by the end, so I guess it was a good cool-down.