IBM Uptown Classic Pictures!

I like alot of these.. chece 'em out: you can search by race number; mine was 144.

IBM Uptown Classic Pictures

race week

My training and fitness has definately taken a hit from being sick for that week, but I'm still hanging in there, running hard. Got a 12 miler in on monday on many of the tougher San Marcos hills. Good news for Sunday's race: Looks like a Northern is blowing in to cool it down a bit - which will be awesome. I'm not exactly thrilled about this race course. It's an out an back on a newly completed highway/toll road. Talk about boring. Supposedly a slight downhill for the 5 miles out and then the opposite back. I decided to set my goal at 62:30, which equals 6:15 pace; so we'll see how it goes.

Sick...

So I came down with something fierce that wiped out a whole solid week of training last week. What a waste! But I'm feeling well again so I started to pick things back up with a solid 6 mile CT on Sunday and a 9 mile long run today. Hopefully I can jump back into my PPMs successfully tomorrow.

IBM Uptown Classic 10k

So I got up and headed to the race still feeling sickish... sore throat, kinda feverish, just not feeling well. I checked in my chip, used the facilities-in the mall-it's going down... haha, anyway then I warmed up with some easy running and about 5 strides.

The weather was not so friendly today, mid 80s and very humid! The start was very crowded but we did have some elite guys trying to break the city record(they feel short).

I went out fairly fast just to separate myself from the crowded front but I told myself to race my own race and paced myself back some. I ended up running with alot of familar faces from the last few races. Funny story... at the Country Roads 10k a few weeks ago I was way back from this guy but ended up overtaking him with about .6 miles to go and really separating myself to take 3rd overall. Well, I was running close to the same guy today and at about the 5k mark I made my move and passed him... he looked over and said "not again", i just gave an out of breath laugh, pretty funny though.

I can be happy with my performance though because I was really pushing myself hard I felt. Anytime I would feel like I wasn't going to make it, I just tell myself "you never quit, son" a little thing I took from Lance Armstrong's book.

So, I ended up running it in 37:23.5 which is about 6:01 pace. Not very far from my goal time and a big time PR! Was 32nd overall in a field of 2000+ and 5th in my age group.

I also heard they're doing Tour de France style yellow jerseys for age group leaders, I'm optimistic I might have one of those for the next race in 3 week! Time to get ready for the 10 miler....

Race prep - bad news.

So I ran my CT pretty nicely on Friday and did a nice easy 5 miler Saturday. I was thinking as I was running; most people probably don't think such a thing as an easy 5 miler exists.. kinda funny. Anyway, Friday was good cuz I got an offer for a full time job coming out of college as a Financial Analyst with BP! Saturday was not so good... I started coming down with something the day before the big race! what is that!?

Thursday - Long PPM

Despite fighting some wind and a little warmer day, I was able to convert my short PPM(4 miles) in 23:23 but totally died afterwards. Fortunately, I picked it up in the last mile or so and finished the 6 miles in 35:41, about 27 seconds faster than last week and a new best LONG PPM of 5:57!

The last two weeks may be the best training I feel like I've ever done, things are looking up for the race Sunday... I think I'll up my goal time to 37' flat.

Also, on advice from Colt, I'm gonna train right into the race, only taking the day before as an easy five miler, So tomorrow I'll be doing a 7 mile CT, see if I can nail this and go into the race strong!

Wednesday

Today I went out a nailed my 8 mile CT at 6:40 pace with a nice sized hill and rolling hills throughout the way. Getting ready for the big 6 mile PPM tomorrow, 'gonna hurt!

Training

Right now I've been following a training program called the PAAVO program that was reccomended to me by a buddy of mine. It has really increased the amount of quality miles I run and keeps me focused. The basic structure of the program right now is:

Monday: Long run
Tuesday: Short PPM
Wednesday: CT
Thursday: Long PPM
Friday: CT
Saturday: Longest Day CT
Sunday: CT

PPM is pace-per-mile and everything in the program is based off this pace. Basically, for the short PPM you run all out. On long PPM days the main goal is to hit your short PPM time on the way to the long PPM and just hang on for the extended distance.

CT is critical threshold and is about 45 seconds per mile slower than the previous PPM.

Background

I started this to log my training and show results from the Austin Distance Challenge. The DC is a series of 7 races ranging from a 10k to a full marathon in February. My main goals are to finish in the overall top ten and first in my age class... we shall see.