Sunday, April 09, 2006

Track speedwork

I watched the start of Ironman Arizona on the live feed - how exciting to see a couple thousand athletes, including some that I know, all head out into the water and a day of exertion and challenges and unknowns! We're cheering for you!

I knew it would be a couple more hours before any athlete results came up, so I went out for a run.

It was clear and sunny and kind of cold (49*F) and I was thinking about that tough 10K at the end of the Columbia Triathlon that I have coming up in 6 weeks, so I decided to spice it up with a little of what passes for speedwork for me. I rarely do speedwork (I do one mile repeats fairly often, but seldom shorter distances, since most of my events require much more endurance than power/speed), but I'd like to have strong legs for that hilly 10K!

Four half-mile repeats (plus some recovery jogs) in:
  • 4:40
  • 4:28 - woo! an 8-second 800m PR!! Yay!
  • 4:46
  • 4:57

That's still a long, long, long way from the 3:31 that I'd need to qualify for the 800 in the National Senior Games, but if I actually worked on speedwork, it's not completely out of the question in the future some day!

Then I came back home, did a little yardwork, took four bins of recycling over to the big receptacles, and then came back inside to check up on the IMAZ results so far. Now I get this at ironmanlive.com, which SUCKS!:

"IronmanLive.com is currently down for scheduled maintenance. We will have the system restored shortly. We are extremely sorry for this inconvenience. We are working very quickly to minimize the disruption. This page will attempt to reload every few minutes, so if you would like to stand by, you can continue your visit once service is restored."

AND the live webcast is down. It looks like they were making some major overhauls of their websites, and today, unfortunately, was the test day. BUMMER! :-(

8 comments:

onepinkfuzzy said...

yes, i want to know why they chose ironman az day to do their maintenance!!! argh!

Mojo said...

Great job with your PR run today! I hate when I see 10 x 60 sec hard(zone 5) /60 rest on my run plan. I am not a rabbit.

I prefer slow and steady wins the race.

Tammy said...

It's working now. Benny's had some awesome times!! And very quick transitions! :)

Kewl Nitrox said...

Congrats on the PR!

I am after a new pair of Tri shorts... Will try to find the De Soto 4 pocket shorts that you recommended.

Anonymous said...

Congratulations on the PR :)

That speedwork will do wonders to make you faster, even in longer runs. Keep it up!

Ellie Hamilton said...

WoooHOOOO! Speed reps and a PR!! You go, girl!

AirHead here missed IMAZ because of traveling... then being distracted by setting up in a new place.... remembered IMAZ after going to bed :-( And here I was stewing a couple days ago that I probably could have DONE it. And I missed even following it. AirHead.

Nancy Toby said...

Well, get on line and register TODAY if you're planning to be back in Arizona next winter!!! :-)

tri-mama said...

the maintenance thing doesn't exactly inspire confidence, but I guess you can't think of eveything all the time. Nice track work!