Michael: The Road Runs

The terraced hillsides
Are manicured by cows’ hooves
And dairy farmers
.
Thursday, December 10, 2015

Without easy access to a track or treadmill here in Volcan, we’re hitting the road two to three times a week for our runs. This past year was the first time I’d consistently trained on the road for about 15 years. But these are long country roads that are lightly trafficked and without lights or major intersections. Surprisingly, it’s a rather enjoyable change from the track or treadmill grinds I use to do.

On Mondays we do speed work. Outside of  being fun, quick and relatively easy, speed work serves a variety of purposes. One, it throws in a bit of high intensity training. It’s good form work, and it helps maintain fast twitch muscle fibers. When I was 16, I ran a 4:42 mile. Now I’m in the 5:10 range. I’d like to stay as near to 5 for as long as I can.

 To start our speed work we jog for about 5 minutes to cross a bridge over the Chiriqui River to a long straight roughly 6% grade stretch of the road to Rio Sereno. There we’ll do sprints up and down the hill. We change the intensity by changing the time of our reps every month and the number or repetitions every week. For example, this month we’re running for 45 seconds, starting with 6 reps; three up/ three down the hill. Every week we’ll add two reps. Next month we’ll start the first Monday with 1 minute of running hard and 6 reps. We take us much time as we like to recover in between reps.

I can’t see going over a minute hard for speed work on the road. Not that it wouldn’t be beneficial for my running, but I do feel at that point I’d be butting my head up against the law of diminishing returns and mentally it would just become a grind.

On Fridays, we switch to the road that heads toward Bambito for an interval/tempo run. Again, this stretch of the road is long and straight but on a much more shallower incline, though going up hill is almost always going against the wind. To make that bearable, I’ll do a countdown 6-5-4-3-2-1 interval run, where, after a short warm up, I’ll pick up the pace for 6 minutes, then jog for 3 minutes to recover; pick it up for 5 minutes; jog for 2 minutes to recover, and so on.

It’s a little game for me. If its not too windy and I do the pick ups at a decent clip, I’ll hit the 7k mark, the Hotel Bambito, after the 3 minute interval and am rewarded by shaving the 2 and 1 minute reps off my workout. But the catch is that leaves my legs a bit more fatigued for the turn around 6k tempo run back to Volcan. How much does pushing the intervals effect my speed on the way back? That’s the game. The tempo run on the way back also gives me a good indication of how my training is progressing by providing me with a constant measure I can look at throughout the year.

Every other Sunday we’re doing a long easy road run. This run, though on the road, far better mimics the conditions I’ll face for the 100k trail race at the end of February. It’s my race lab. We’re starting with 11 miles and will build up to 21 miles before tapering for the race. I don’t know exactly why, but I oddly look forward to these runs. And I know it’s not just because it gave me an excuse to buy a new pair of running shoes.

I’m enjoying these road sessions much more than I ever thought I would, though nothing beats the trails.