Preblast – Falling into Pace

Preblast – Falling into Pace

Overview

We’ll launch at 0515 from the NEW Ballantyne Corporate Park parking area across from Duckworths and in front of the OrthoCarolina Urgent Care Ballantyne. We’ll be running on familiar roads, but some are dark and without sidewalks, so you should wear reflective/visibility gear and have lighting like a headlamp or flashlight.

Continuing on the goodness of August/September that Gumbo and Bunker brought to the Swift workout in the areas of targeting 5K/10K paced intervals, we’ll shift into longer intervals at a slower target pace to continue to build Strength. These intervals will be run at “MP-10”. This means at your goal marathon pace, minus 10 seconds per mile. If your goal marathon pace is 8:00/mile then your goal pace for this workout would be 7:50 per mile.

Don’t have a goal marathon pace? Well then use this Race Calculator (click for link). Enter a recent race effort (Distance, Finishing Time), click Calculate, go to the Equivalent tab and look at Pace/Mi on the row for Marathon.

The Plan

• 0500 or earlier – getting extra warm-up and starting some of the intervals early.
• 0515 – MAIN GROUP START – run up Ballantyne Commons to Metlife
• 0525 – start warm-up drills making our way through the parking roads down to North Community House.
• 0530 – Start the Intervals of 7 minutes at MP-10, 3 minutes jog recovery and regroup. We will complete 4 Intervals.
  • For some PAX, these will be a little over 1mi, for others, a little less than 1mi. The goal is to regroup to the Six each time and start each MP-10 interval on the 10minute mark (0530, 0540, 0550, 0600). See Extra Notes below for more on the effort of this workout.
  • The route will be up North Community House, Right on Endhaven, Right on Elm (caution for short section of only a wide shoulder), Right on Ballantyne Commons, and head back to launch point in the Corporate Park. Total mileage for the loop is 6.0 miles. If you can average a 10:00/mi run, you can do this workout!
• 0615 – COT

Extra Notes

More on Marathon Pace minus 10 (“MP-10”). If you’ve been a Swift regular and recall Threshold Pace (aka T-pace, aka Comfortably Hard, aka Lactate Threshold), MP-10 ends up being slower than Threshold and somewhere near half the difference to Marathon goal pace.

Here are some other thoughts about the target effort for this MP-10 Strength workout, “So, usually through a combination of running too fast and not maximizing the recovery jog, they get to the 3rd or 4th one and realize they’ve dug a hole they can’t get out of. Remember, speed work usually brings acute discomfort. It’s usually an eye opener from the get go. Strength workouts should sneak up on you. The same effort for the last few should feel fairly hard compared to the first one or two. That’s when you’ve done it right- think slow cooker. You are slowly building that lactic feeling. Never fully recovering from the repeat prior and letting the discomfort slowly add to each successive repeat.“

See you in the Gloom!