This week has been pretty slow training wise, but uber busy in every other aspect. As the team captain, I've been busy getting everything set and lined up for the start tomorrow - picking up running shirts, getting the crates ready for each van, printing out race bibles, dotting all the Is and crossing all the Ts. When I haven't been doing Ragnar-related activities, I've actually been working at my real job (shocker, I know) and various other FD-related things.
Monday I did an easy little run up to Station 2 to get my truck inventory checked off. Last week we had a doozy of a meeting (the infamous "ass-ripping" I mentioned) basically letting all of us 5&Unders know that shit is about to get real serious and second chances aren't coming easy anymore. With that in mind, I made sure to get my inventory done ASAP this week because I didn't want to A) leave it till the last minute, or B) forget it entirely, thus ensuring my very own, personal ass-ripping, rather than the general one we were all given last week. It was an easy 2ish miles up there, and then about an hours worth of work up there, going over everything on the trucks and making sure all the equipment is in working order and nothing needs to be serviced. After that, I ran up to HQ to drop off my inventory sheets and then wound my way back home on a slightly longer route. All together it was somewhere in the 5 mile range, which I was happy about.
Tuesday I had off and then yesterday I went out for hill repeats. In hindsight I realize that the first two legs of my Ragnar adventure this weekend will be two giant hill repeats, but they were listed on my schedule for this week, and seeing as how I skipped speed work entirely last week, I figured now is not the best time to start slacking on my training program.
I set out from work since I had an early client and headed north towards the harbor. Starting from the village makes it relatively easy to do a hill workout - the hardest part is actually picking which hill you want to do. While running on the north shore of Long Island isn't exactly the same as running in a more mountainous region, we have our fair share of rollers and steep inclines, so every run is essentially a hilly one. Anyway, I wanted to get in an easy 2 miles warm-up before the hills, so I picked a route up towards the harbor where I knew there were some longer inclines. I picked out a nice looking little climb and did a test run up to see what it was like and to map out the distance. I picked a starting and ending point and went to work.
At .15 of a mile, this isn't the longest hill that I've done so far this training program, but it was the hardest. It had an average gradient of 16%, which is the toughest sustained gradient I've done repeats on. I might have hit 16% at one point or another one the other hills I've run, but to have any average gradient be 16% meant that I was hitting inclines well above at times.
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| See that portion that's highlighted in red? Yeah, that's what a 12% gradient looks like. So just think about something steeper than that. |
Here's the breakdown:
1 - 1:10.7
2 - 1:04.6
3 - 1:09.8
4 - 1:07.2
5 - 1:06.4
6 - 1:06.6
7 - 1:06.4
8 - 1:06.0
As you can see, these times are significantly slower than previous hill repeats. I'm used to times in the high :40s and low :50s for relatively the same distance, so the simple fact that I couldn't break a minute can show you just how tough the repeats were. My biggest goal for the day was to work on keeping a high cadence up the hill, with a focus on high leg turnover. I'm never going to have a climb as steep as the one yesterday in the marathon, but the Queensboro Bridge is a pretty sustained, steady climb, so by focusing on the high turnover rate on a short, steeper hill, I'll be able to translate that over to race day. Or at least that's what I hope to do.
We are heading out today around 3:30, so I probably won't get another run in before then - every a short one. I still haven't packed yet (although, it's really not that hard to pack for a Ragnar, just make sure you have enough clean socks to get you through each of your runs and you're pretty much set to go) and I need to make sure that everything we could possibly need is in the car and ready to roll. But seeing as how I'm running 23 miles over the course of Friday and Saturday, I'm really not all that stressed about not running today.
Next week officially starts my taper, although my first taper week still contains track work and ends with a 20 miler, so I'm not really sure how much of a "taper" that actually is. But either way, my mileage starts to get cut starting next Monday. I also go dry (yikes!) for the four weeks leading up to Marathon Sunday starting then, so it looks like October is shaping up to be a long month.
I will probably be having way too much fun for someone that is trapped in a van with other sweaty, smelly people to write, but have no fear, there will be a Ragnar edition race report waiting for when I get back.
Enjoy your weekend and good luck to everyone running in the Entenmann's Half and the Diva! Happy training and make sure you enjoy yourself - it's gonna be a gorgeous weekend.
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