What a weekend, I am blown away by the fantastic job that the Race Weekend organizers  and volunteers did.

I experienced Joy and Happiness for such a smooth weekend with exciting races from 2k to 42.2 k!

I would love to tell you about my race and describe some of the emotions!  I ran the 10km on Saturday night and I was lucky to have the opportunity to suit up next to some of the world’s best in the elite section!  Sure I may be almost a foot taller than Mr Merga but boy is he intimidating. I was grateful to have one of Canada’s best distance men there beside me (Reid Coolsaet) he is always smiling and wow what a pace bunny!  Reid was using the race as a training run so he was running at his marathon pace and he is something of a metronome.

The plan was to go out and run 3:10 min/km, simple enough right?  Well let’s look at kms 1 and 2…Over excited and slight downhill so 3:oo and 3:02 respectively…opps.  Somehow missed the 3km split but then it was bang on 3:10 until km 7 when things got rough!  Kms 7 and 8 are a little up hill and I started really noticing the heat, I was ready to shut (pain) it down by the time we got to Pretoria bridge during the 8th km and Reid obviously knowing this says “Hey dude this is where you make yourself a man”.  Right I’m suppose to give up after that (pride)?! So after a dismal 3:25km in that portion of the race I fired up the last km and let loose any and everything I had left and ended up 31:48!  A personal best! 16th Overall.

http://sportstats.ca/display-results.php?lang=eng&racecode=46317

It was a great race and I was in awe, there wasn’t a 5m stretch without a screaming fan.  I was really excited to see how popular running truly is in this city!

The next morning I went out to cheer on friends and family in the marathon.  Flashback to Saturday post race I was in rough shape, I didn’t sleep and spent a lot of time in and around the bathroom.  The combination of going all the way to the well in my race and lack of sleep put me in one hell of a mood Sunday.  I kid you not I road my bike up along side the marathon saw a woman crying and hugging someone on the side of the road and shed a couple of tears myself right then and there.  There was just something overwhelming about that sight, I couldn’t for the life of my figure out why the hell any one would do that to themselves.  Luckily, Chef and I got a lot of “I Run” statements at the Expo so I do know why people do it but I’m still baffled at why we put ourselves through that pain.  For me I think it’s just all I know at this point, pain and perseverance.  I’d love it if any readers post below and tell me why they do it.

Anyway I’ll say it again what a great weekend and congrats to anyone who was out there I hope the weekend was an emotional roller-coaster for all of you as well.  I know some of the above aren’t all emotions per se but you get the idea!

Keep doing what you do,

Josh

P.s stay tuned I may have video of the finish! Chef?

So Thursday evening I had some plans and there was about an hour and a half to get in a real good workout (I’m cramming for race weekend) after work.  I said to my boss/coach I want to run under 32:00 for 10k, hit me with a workout!  I love the creativity of his workouts and he thought for about a second and said ok I got one, whipped out the calculator and came up with this:

4 x (1k @ 3:10 m/k, 1k @ 3:30 m/k)

So that’s back to back 1 kms at that specific pace, rest after the first set 1 minute at 4:oo m/k, after second set 45 seconds at 4:00 m/k and then 30 seconds at 4:00 m/k for the final ‘rest’.  If your thinking that must have felt harder and harder all the way through…it did.

Now the major problem I encountered was that at that speed and with a 1% grade the treadmill starts to do a funny thing.  The entire machine walked about 10 feet across the room and I had to jump off during the rest and wheel it back to the other side of the room!  Ridiculous right?!  It was nice to have that on my mind though because it certainly helps you forget the hurt of the workout.

Anyway workout completed and one step closer to my goal, 2 weeks today!  Hope everyone’s training is going great.

It is such an amazing time to be a runner when it’s spring (unless you have allergies).  It’s like all the trials and denials of winter running just wash away with a little spring rain.  I don’t know about the rest of you but it takes me a while to figure out what to wear so as not to be too cold or to overheat.

I’ve started working out with a group on Tuesdays in the Arboretum/Experimental farm, great to be in a big group of runners again, such social creatures we are!

Last week we were out (in the rain) and here is the workout:

-18min warm-up to the arb

-another 15min warm-up with the group

-4 strides

-4x ~2km with a 3min jogging rest

-(@ 6:22, 6:19, 6:26 and 6:09)

-20min cool down

So it was a rainy night and I of course over dressed by 3 layers.  Anyway great running with people again I always forget all the little things about group running: someone is breathing heavy, some one has a click in there ankle and of course the never ending array of bottley functions.

It certainly is nice to run in peace and quiet, I’ll be the first one to admit that, but every now and then I encourage you to find a group to run with especially if your doing speed and take note of all the noises that you encounter around you I bet you’ll have a little chuckle.

More to come on the speedwork I will be hitting a few hard sessions over the next few weeks to prepare for the Race Weekend 10k!

Anyhow I went to Hamilton this past weekend to do the Bay and Back 5k.  Now this is tough to tell people because they say oh wow that’s a long way to go for a 5k, yes well i’m working up to 30 okay, I plan to do one in 2050 when I have lost my sanity.  I have nothing against long races like half’s, 30 k or marathons I admire your patience but some of the folks that do these long races need to try and understand short races through my eyes, it can be very challenging!

For instance have you ever opened up a race with a 2:48 first km?  That can really make it challenging to do another 4 afterward.  Yes this really is what happened, let me go back and describe the lead up to the race.

Over the winter I did a lot of cross country skiing, running, and some spinning.  Most exercise sessions were a good hour to 3 hours long and really when I exercise by myself I can get carried away and I work pretty hard but at least I work hard for a long time so I work my base.  Thank god for these long workouts because that’s what saved me in the second half of that race, I was strong enough to power through a fast opening pace and hang on!

Obviously because this is a speed blog I also need to tell you the importance of my speed work.  I did probably 8 to 10 good solid sessions on the indoor track this winter, a fleury of different intervals ranging from 200m to 2000m all of which played an important factor in my fitness for this first race of the spring/summer season.

I’ve always done a really good race imitating workout 10 days out from an important race, now I felt this race was important since it would set the tone for the season so 10 days prior to this past sunday I hit the track for a 5km interval workout.  I opened the workout with a 1 km to set the tone and then move into 2 km interval working that middle section of a race where you need a strong rhythm.  After about 3km whether it’s mental or physical you tend to lose that rhythm so did an 800m focusing on staying strong and trying to run around or faster than my race pace.  The final km or so is always wild and that’s where speed endurance kicks in and you need to be sharp and ready to make a move so I finished the workout with 3x 400m.  I did this workout on an outdoor track and I had to steeple chase a large snowbank so the times were inaccurate and really all I needed was to make sure I felt like I was working hard!

Anyway the race went superb I was predicting a 15:50 given my workout times and past experiences with the distance.  I ended up running 15:02 for 5th place out of 2000 people.  A previous teammate of mine took the win with an impressive 14:10.  It was a great day and even though I am ecstatic and shocked with the time I now think of how sweet it would be to see 14.xx so my friends I continue on my speedwork journey and I will do my best to keep you posted.

P.s if I had run 15:00 I could have gained free entry to the Ottawa Race Weekend 10k! Dammit!!

This workout is a funny followup from the last one I blogged on because you’re pretty much “sandbagging”, saving it for later on.  However, it really is important to work on your pacing abilities so in this scenario, not Sandbagging.  This was a bit tough for me because I haven’t raced in ages and I have NO idea what my 5k race pace is.  I guessed I’d be between 16 and 16:30 at this stage of things so I thought I’d try out 3:15 1000’s to start.  I was a bit quick after 400m of the first one so I slowed right down and ended up running 3:18 opps a little slow but better that at this stage than to fast.  Next one was a nice even 3:14,  mentally these intervals were shockingly easy so I felt this was probably an okay estimate of my race pace.

I don’t really like it when a workout feels easy so I got progressively more excited as things heated up!  Obviously I got a little excited and the 3rd one ended up being 3:02 opps! Back on with a 3:05 on the 4th and then it was really go time.  The thing I love about the final interval is that no matter what, you have enough to finish so you may as well see if you can just crush it, I mean you made it this far!  So I’m sure you can all do the math my last 1000 was suppose to be 2:55, when it gets to this point I don’t feel like I have the capacity to pace myself really it’s an all out effort so I got up to the fastest pace that I thought I could hold for a full 1000.  I ended up running 2:49, so about 25 seconds faster than my predicted race pace.  This felt great and gave me a great boost of confidence so really I benefited in a couple of ways from this workout.  I got that nice aerobic type stimulus and then a good hard hit of confidence at the end!  This is good now I just have to keep up confidence and get ready for a my first race since the fall!  I’ll be heading to Hamilton for the Around the Bay 5k!  I’ll check in before then but we will see how accurate my estimates were for 5k pace.

If your just getting to know me, check out one of my favourite races the 1000m final at the Ontario University champs last year, I’m the second guy in lane one at the start!

Happy Running,

Josh

p.s Funny story my pump up music pre workout was Annie Lennox!!  That’s right I’m running on running on broken glass.  Anyone who cares to read this far won’t make fun of me I figured!

Hello readers,

I’m excited to be able to share my workouts and general running thoughts with you all!  My name is Josh I am a recent University of Guelph graduate.  My time at Guelph was spent doing a lot of running, eating, sleeping, and every now and then some studying.  The city of Guelph has a very strong running community focused around the University team (multiple national titles over the last decade) and a strong post-collegiate group (currently boasting 2 Olympians and 3 World Championships participants).

You can likely imagine I’ve taken part in some pretty epic workouts, for example 14×400m with 75 seconds rest averaging 63s/400m or 5x Mile with 5 minutes rest averaging 4:45.  Each workout you experience a pain like no other but for some reason at the end of everyday it’s worth it and you wouldn’t trade anything in the world for it.

I’m currently living in Ottawa and enjoying all the amazing activities this city has to offer: snowshoe running, skate skiing, long blades on the canal and the occasional spin class.  Of course all these are fine and dandy but deep down more often than not I have that urge to just run some fast intervals!

For my first Blog I wanted to introduce myself but I also wanted to share one I had written last week after a workout that was sort of a sample but I really like the topic.

The word of the day is Sandbagging!

What is Sandbagging you ask?  Let me put it this way: saving ones energy during a workout so that your final interval is fastest.

The Workout: Jog warm up followed by 3 sets of (4x 200m, 1x 1200m/30sec rest between each interval) 3 min rest between sets.  200’s were at 33 sec until the final set 34 sec and the 1200’s were 3:39, 3:39 & 3:33 respectively.

Now I’ve been working out with some of Canada’s best young runners for the past five years and Sandbagging is something that you will get mocked mercilessly for (see also winning the warm-up).  I’ve been training on my own for a while and I guess I felt like I owed myself a good final interval and so last night at the end of my workout yes I put down an awesome last interval at the expense of a few 200’s that could have been faster but now my confidence is SKY HIGH!

Here’s the question (there are likely a few schools of thought) is it better for me at this stage to do what I did and take the confidence boost or should I have drilled all my intervals and thrown myself to the wolves on the final one risking a potential blow to my confidence?

Whatever you decide make sure you do your own little cost/benefit analysis, some need the confidence from numbers while some can take confidence away from knowing they emptied the tank for a full workout.  Next time I will empty the tank and let you know what works for me!

Thanks for reading and please pretty please never hesitate to comment with thoughts and concerns!

Josh Roundell