3x1 mile

Its amazing how much fitness you lose when you take 2 months off from training. After the Chicago Marathon I spent 2 months resting and rehabilitating my tired and some what broken body. On January 5th I returned to the track with a fire in my belly and the will to build a strong, healthy body in a sustainable fashion. To do so I had to look at what I had done wrong in the past and adjust my training accordingly. The one staple of my training that I will never give up is the dreaded mile repeats. I have been doing this workout since I was 15 years old and nothing else in my mind helps shape the runner's mind and body like a good set of evenly paced 4 laps around the track. The one issue that I find myself running into with this workout is that I historically try to 'beat' the workout, and run these intervals too fast. This leads to burnout, injury and a feeling of dread on Wednesdays knowing what workout lays ahead. This cycle I am going to pace my workout down to the second, slowly building strength and adjusting my interval pace and recovery time as my speed, stamina and strength develops over the 4 months leading up to my goal race. The idea that you can just race yourself into shape is just not a sustainable practice for the runner who wants to train and race 12 months out of the year. I have 16 more sets of mile repeats to go before my goal race. I have broken down the weeks into 4 phases. My pace and recovery times are 10k-1/2 marathon pace w/ 5 min recovery. Phase 2 10k pace w / 4 minutes recovery phase 3 1 mile - 5k pace with 5 minutes recovery Phase 4 10k pace with 2 minute recovery. Exciting things to come.