SOFAWIB Preblast: Cannon Call

An Easier Workout made Harder by the PAX

Almost a week ago on Tuesday, 1/26, 18 PAX from the SonsOfBallantyne AO took off into the Gloom for the weekly Speed workout known as Swift.

The THANG:

• 0500 – Early crew gets going for some warm-up miles.  Bratwurst and JRR Tolkien do some recon on the course to make sure it’s ice free (yes, this was a week ago when there was still some white stuff around).
• 0515 – Grab the rest of the PAX for the proper warm-up.
• 2nd F pace over to the Ballantyne Corp Drive bridge over Hwy 521 where we do some skipping when we’re not supposed to and true butt kicks (Mr. Bean really wanted to show his soccer/football warm-up prowess), and then mosey down to the bottom of the hill where we explain the workout.
• Objective – Run at Threshold Pace for 1000 meters (1Kilometer) along Bally Corp Dr over towards Bally Commons.  Threshold pace is defined as a Comfortably Hard pace, between 10K and Half-marathon pace, defined better at http://runsmartproject.com/calculator , or more simply as 1:00/mi slower than your goal 1mile race pace (since that’s what we’re shooting for, the final explanation is probably the easiest to keep in focus).
• Workout – 1K, 1:00 rest, repeat until 0610.
• At 0610 – meet at the 4-way STOP and head back to COT.

Moleskin:

• The Cones – the cones marked the start, some distances along the way, and marked the end.  In actual distance, the interval was more like 850 meters from start to end.  We simply ran out of real estate unless the PAX wanted to play in traffic.  Instead of revising, we just went with it.  Cones along the way ended up being at 400m, 800m and 850m in one direction.  And then 800m (from the end) and 400m (from the end) in the other direction.  Didn’t exactly help for pacing checks because they weren’t consistent both ways, but at the very least, probably provided some marker about how far was left or you had gone.
• The Pace – For YHC, this workout turned into something not done before.  The Interval was run faster than Threshold Pace, but given the 1 minute recovery, felt like the effort was right.  Explanation – Threshold Pace workouts normally run with multiple 1 mile interval / 1 minute recovery.  Or multiple 2 mile interval / 2 minute recovery.  Or a single 20minute interval.  This was supposed to be an intro workout to give a shorter 1K interval (funny how Mr. Bean wanted to make sure that was right at 0.62mi when he grew up on the Metric system) and 1 minute recovery – should have been easy.  However, when you don’t have a working pace watch (Frasier’s is stuck in time), or cones to mark consistent distances (thanks to YHC’s planning), and PAX to chase around, it’s hard to stay on Pace.  Your body / breathing / fatigue will be your guide.  With a tested workout plan, if you can’t stay consistent on the intervals, then your pacing is off.  Sometimes, you have to adjust to get the workout you need.  For today for YHC, with the shorter 850m interval and 1 minute rest, that meant faster than Threshold Pace.
• Where to run – YHC began the warm-up perhaps setting a bad precedent – running in the middle of the road.  When confronted with an oncoming vehicle, icy sidewalks, and trash truck coming up from behind, we hit the open middle turning lane.  When running the first interval, YHC again ran down the middle (of a road with bike lanes and a middle turning lane) to place cones in the middle.  However, when going through the rest of the workout, YHC meandered between middle and left side of the road.  Now some of this was fatigue from trying to stay with the PAX in front (run the tangent), but it was not thinking very well.  There was more traffic than normal on this segment of road, but if the shoulders are clear, we should always run facing traffic on the Left side of the road.  You won’t get as many high fives because you won’t be as close to passing PAX, but you have a higher probability that one of the PAX or an EMT won’t be lifting you off of the road.  On high traffic roads like BCP, let’s stay on the shoulders.
• If you haven’t invested in a GPS watch yet, there’s still an easy way to measure your workout with your smartphone.  The Strava App can record your workout, and though it doesn’t have the ability to manually Lap when you Start/ Stop interval, you can go back in later and mark Segments in Strava to break up your workout and see what your interval performance was.  There are many running apps out there, but YHC has found Strava to hold the most benefits from recording distance on your shoes to getting on Wing_Man’s leaderboard.
• Was reading some really old Backblasts from a while back, and forgot about Haggis’s use of the word “Chunder” – not sure if this ever happened then or since, but that’ll be the goal this Tuesday.