Chapter 1: Hills

So I'm committed to keeping up on this thing but things don't seem as exciting to post about as they once did. To keep from going over a week empty I'll share today's workout.

Things started before breakfast with a little quiet time/ stretching. I have a long history of tight hamstrings and with today's run it was important to make sure everything was loose and ready to fire. The first session today was the last (RUN) race specific workout before the Xterra in Temecula (May18.) Drove out to Cutler park in Needham to do some Threshold/ Neuromuscular work on a hilly stretch of single track.

The warm up: 30 minutes steady on some nice and flat fireroads on the trails behind Wells Ave followed by some quick stretching, 5 minutes of form drills, and a handful of 15 sec. strides to get the turnover going. It was in the mid 70's and I was down to less than half a bottle by the end of the warm up. The main set: 7x3 minutes (Just under 1k) on 2 minutes jog. The course was an out and back starting with a gradual down hill into flat into a long/steep/loose uphill fallowed by two steep down hills, a medium up, and medium down. Then around the "cone" (a rock pyramid) and back to the start (or as far as you can make it.) The effort level is just a little quicker than 3k pace. The goal being to go past your previous finish spot each time. The effort is just long enough to bring your HR up to threshold but the main focus is on controlling your form on the hills and being as smooth as possible in changing from climbing pace, descending pace, and flat pace on the short hills. Total of 35 minutes with 21 minutes of quality. Cool down: 15 minutes easy jog, stretch, and a 20 oz. chocolate milk!

Second session today was a steady 1.5hr road ride in the P.M. Good for flushing out the legs from this morning and loosening up for tomorrow's workout on the MTB.

So that's it. Another Tuesday in the books. The 19th Tuesday of the year, to put it into perspective. If you like hearing about workouts I'll try and add one or two a week. In the meantime, I'll get out in the real world and try and find something a non leg-shaving race geek would care to read about. Happy training and racing 'till then.