I took a pretty good chunk of time away from blogging at
the end of summer in order to get myself ready for the upcoming school year.
However, the break from blogging certainly did not mean a break from running. I
changed a few things in training post Western States 100 (WS100) to prepare for
the faster pace 50 milers I will be doing this Fall. I plan to race Tussey
Mountain Back 50 Mile U.S. Road Championships, and JFK 50 Mile. Both courses
are relatively fast by comparison to many well-known 50 mile races.
Once I
picked up training at full capacity post WS100 something very ironic happened.
I managed to return to Wisconsin unscathed, after running for two weeks on the most technical terrain I have experienced. Within days of
being on a flat dirt trail in Wisconsin I tripped and managed to roll my ankle
(see pictures below). I thought it was much worse than it ended up being. Fortunately,
the folks at Aurora
Bay Care Sports Medicine set me up with some good advice that
resulted in only about a total of 7 days of non-running, and I was back in
business.
Once my
ankle felt good I spent about a month building up my base with very minimal
amounts of intense sessions. I wanted to ease into intensity training, while
gradually backing away from higher miles. As Tussey and JFK come closer I will need a bit more speed in my legs. In August
and September I have scaled down to 100-150 miles (averaging around 120-130) and started adding more intensity.
My hope is to raise my threshold, making the faster average paces at Tussey and
JFK seem easier. Here are a few of the workouts I have enjoyed doing.
The
20 40
Peter
Defty, of Vespa, got me hooked on this workout and I have tried to include variations of
it into my training. After a nice long warm up (40-60 minutes) I break each
minute into an interval/recovery block. It starts with a 20 second sprint,
followed by a 40 second jog, and repeat. Some days I will do this 10 times,
other days up to 40. I plan to get to 60 minutes before race day. I also use it
as a warm up to a tempo run (typically I’ll only do 10 for a warm up).
Road
Repeats
I love
this one, because it mimics repeats on the track, but you don’t have to go to
the track to do it. Basically I get a nice long warm up in before I start.
Typically, 30-60 minutes. I then break the interval sessions into 3 minute
blocks. The first minute will be at a high intensity, approximately 5k pace or
faster. The next two minutes are recovery job. Currently I do about 10 repeats
of this, but hope to be up close to 20 before JFK.
5k
Repeats
This
workout is really intriguing to me. I learned about it from a former UW-Stevens
Point teammate of mine, Phil Richert. Basically, it is just what it sounds
like. You get on a track or a marked section of road and do repeats at the 5k
distance. Right now I have only done this workout with 2 repeats, but will do a
set of 3 before Tussey. The idea, like in any other interval workout, is to
pick a goal pace and try to hit it on however many 5k repeats you decide to do.
Recovery between intervals should be active. I aim for a 600 meter jog.
Tempo
Tempo
runs are very broad in nature. Depending on what race you are training for will
dictate the pace and distance of your tempo run. Since I’m training for a 50
mile race my tempo miles usually climb up into the double digits. I aim for a
pace between 5:30-6:00 minutes per mile. Currently I have reached 10 miles at
5:45 pace for this training block. I hope to get up to at least 15 miles before
JFK.
I am
really excited about this Falls race offerings, because I haven’t done this
much intensity work leading up to an ultra since my first 50 miler in 2010. I
hope to see some positive effects of an improved running economy. If you have
any interesting intensity workouts please post! I’d love to hear how you get
your fast pace fix.
