Wednesday February 8

In this post: Wednesday night run, being a good neighbor, want to run Chicago? Too Bad and Thursday night tempos.

Wednesday Night Run

Our run this week is Route #6: Riverside - about 4.5 miles. We cross through Shelby Park and head up Riverside.  For you East Nashvillians: it's easy to get turned around on this route - so if you live on the east side, please check out the map and volunteer to lead a pace group.  And everyone needs to look at the route sometime before 6 p.m. Wednesday night!

As always, we meet at 6p.m. at the corner of 11th and Holly in East Nashville.

Being a Good Neighbor

Reflective gear.  Running with 200+ people on a Wednesday night is fantastic, but we have to operate differently.  This week I want to remind people to wear reflective gear.  Better yet, run with a light.  It keeps us all safer.

Want to run the Chicago Marathon?

Too bad.  It sold out in 6 days.  Yet another reminder (like the Mumford and Sons concerts....) that you need to be on the ball!  Seriously, big marathons are selling out in record time, and Chicago should be on your marathon bucket list.  (If you don't have one...you should create a race bucket list...)  So prepare yourself for 2013, and be sure that your ready when registration opens!

Thursday Night Workout

After 4 weeks of hill repeats - we are starting our tempo runs.  Tempo runs are the common thread through any training program - from the marathon to the mile, every distance runner should be doing tempo runs.  Tempo runs are "comfortably hard".  Meaning that you should be just on the edge of breathing hard.  That correlates to about 90% of your max heart rate - or about 25-30 seconds per mile slower than your 5k race pace.  Tempo running is usually done by time, and here is our workout this week:

Novice:  4 x (5 minutes tempo / 1 minute jogging)

Intermediate: 2 x (10 minutes tempo / 2 minutes jogging)

Advanced: 3 x (10 minutes tempo / 2 minutes jogging)

We meet on Thursdays at 6 p.m. at the corner of 11th and Holly.   This week we'll be running down to LP field and running laps of the stadium.  I know, I know...boring...but this will keep us all together and in a well lit area.  We'll move to Shelby once the days get longer.  If you run a little bit on the sidewalk, you can create a perfect mile loop around the stadium.  Here is the loop.   The entire workout should be between 5.5 and 8.5 miles - depending on fitness.

- Mark