Beach Bloggin’

Greetings from Corolla, NC - ahhhhhh......

Blogging in the warm North Carolina ocean breeze is definitely the way to go.  Did 75% of the miserable drive down here yesterday, finished it this morning and am finally established on our long-awaited “beach vacation”.  Sharing a house with our a couple of neighborhood families, probably not the ideal way to fine tune things for a big race but hard to complain when you have your feet in the sand, so I won’t.  Even though this is vacation, there’s still a little bit of running work to do….

After my Oscar-winning performance on Thursday, got in a double workout on Friday.  Hard spin class Friday morning left the legs burning all morning, got out later that afternoon and ran the 4+ miles over to my parent’s house for an early Father’s Day bbq.  Saturday was the travel day after a swim meet for the girls – banged out 5 miles early before the “big sit” – 6+ hours with 400,000 of our closest friends on I-95 Southbound….

Woke up early this morning and grabbed the shoe backpack and headed out for the track.  Warmed up the 2 miles from our “layover” house up to Great Bridge High School in Chesapeake VA.  Used this track last year on our way down to OBX as well so I knew the way.  Track not the best – macadam surface, plenty of spots that could have used a squirt of Roundup as the grass and weeds were busting through the cracks.  Swapped into flats upon arrival, did another lap to get in my drills.  Today’s workout was much shorter than I’ve been doing lately, made good sense with race day only 7 days away.  4×400 (2@67, 2@65), 4×300 (2@46, 2@45) was the plan – was going with 400s on the 3:00, 300s on the 2:00.

400’s went pretty smooth – 66.58, 65.50, 65.79, 65.52 – about as consistent as you can get, close enough to goal pace for me.  Rest was sufficient, didn’t feel particularly stressed knocking these out.  Same can’t really be said for the 300’s…

300 pace was a great prep for the dream 1500 – to break 4:00 I figure it has to be one of those days where I run even paces, then still have enough left to hammer the last 200-300 meters.  46 second 300s is about a 62 second closing quarter – definitely doable if the crowd is into it and a PR is on the line.  First 2 were relaxed and up on my toes – 47.28 as I found the pace, #2 in 45.42.  Next 2 required a little visit to “the well” – only a 300, so it wasn’t as bad as grinding out the final 800 or 1000 of a tough workout, but they definitely burned.  45.64, 45.50 to close – don’t know if I could have gone much faster, think the gear I would have needed would have been the one I am still a little hesitant to use with all the hamstring problems I’ve had.  Happy with the results though, gives me another dose of confidence at race pace.  2 miles of cool down on the way home, 7.25 miles total.

Plan on getting in one quality day down here this week (Tuesday tempo?), with a couple of days of mileage and then plenty of rest.  In between is scheduled plenty of good old-fashioned rest and relaxation – all those cold winter all-nighters to Flint, Michigan and all those other garden spots will make this week all the more gratifying.  I can’t say for certain that I will be the fastest person in Eugene, but I’m gonna do my best to be the most chilled….

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