May 28, Thursday

“There are as many ways to be successful as a distance runner as their are athletes. You have to develop a training schedule of your own.”  Craig Virgin

I have been going to the cnder track almost exclusively for the last few workouts.  I have become less and less confident of the advantages of running on macadam roads these days.  In fact I am becoming less and less confident of slow-running of any kind. For instant my most recent two mile warm-ups consist mainly of running comfortable strides of increasing length while walking in between.

On Tuesday I did a series of  5 x 800m repeats. 4:29, 4:23, 4:13, 4:11, 4:23

I stopped out of caution even though I still felt pretty good. After short rest I ran a final 400 meter run in 1:53.  Covered 4.5 miles

It took a while to work into feeling comfortable at this pace for 800 meters. But after a while the repeats seemed very easy.

Wednesday I rested once again out of an abundance of caution.

Thursday was a cloudy, hot and humid afternoon when I set out to the cinder track once again. I was hoping to run some very comfortable 1200m repeats.  It took over two miles of warm up before I felt I was ready to begin an actual workout. I managed 4  x 1200m progressively.                                       7:18,   6:56,   6:38,   6:38

I was in motion for a total of 1 hour and 13 minutes covering 5.2 miles. When I returned home from this workout I weighed 141 lb.  That could easily be my lowest weight in 50 years. I have not been trying to lose weight. I continue to eat hardy and healthy meals, drink beer, crunch cookies and frequently splurge on ice cream after dinner. I sleep 9 to 10 hours each night. My stats remain constant and positive and I have managed to avoid leg and foot injuries for a number of months now.  By all these indications I should be becoming a stronger Runner. I hope that will prove to be the case when I get a chance to enter a competition some day in the future.  In the meantime I am having fun running. 🙂