Saturday, August 20, 2016

Quadrennial summer sports gathering

Time for an Olympic track and field report: Usain Bolt is really, really fast. Our women's 4x100 and 4x400 are both awesome. So is Mo Farah, who again doubled in the 5K and 10K. Matt Centrowicz wins the men's 1500.

My training is going pretty well, and I'm committing to doing more speedwork (paying a price) and adding more weight work to build some strength. I like running 800s on the treadmill since it's easier to regulate speed and I don't have to get up really early. I ran 5x800, starting at 7:30 pace and banging out the last two at about 7:15 pace.

I felt pretty good after this six-miler-- it's a good start and a good way to add on to my fitness base. 24 miles for the week as I start to feel better about my fitness level. I feel like I'm getting up and over hills better now than I have in recent memory. Average paces are better, average heart rate is better, and my RHR is 46. *thumbs up*

What made me feel like a bum, however, is the 50K Olympic race walk. Matej Toth of Slovakia won in 3:40. His marathon (just over 42K) was 3:06, or a 7:06 mile pace. Amazing. I red-lined it at the Twilight 5K a few months ago at 7:02 per mile, meanwhile this guy is walking, WALKING a 7:06 mile. Meanwhile his final 8K time, for you math majors, comes out to about 34 minutes and change.

Zhen Wang of China won the men's 20K race walk in 1:19:14, or 6:23 per mile. I aspire to run a 5K under 20 minutes someday, and this guy strings four together in 19:49 while walking.

Yikes. Like I needed another reason to feel like a tortoise.


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