Racing to a Sub 90 15K

My race to a sub 90 minute 15K

As I posted early on, I have a goal of running the NYRR 15k on December 1 in under 90 minutes. This is pretty aggressive. It will take a 9:35 pace and my best 10K pace right now is a 10:15. There are a few things that I hope will come together in the next eight weeks.

First, I’m working on dropping another 8 pounds. My weight has been coming off SUPER SLOW. I’m eating well; making healthy choices and managing my calories well. While I’ve dropped one whole pants size and can see a noticeable difference in the mirror, the scale is creeping along slower than me going uphill. In total since August 20th, I’ve only dropped 5 pounds. At this rate it will take me until the start of training next year to get down where I want to be. I’m just going to keep plugging away at this. I can’t obsess over it (too much). Even a drop of 5 pounds before the race will make a noticeable difference in my ability to run well.

Second, I’ve embarked on a speed program. I’ve looked at a variety of speed programs aimed at 5k’s and 10k’s. I couldn’t find one for a 15K so I improvised a bit. The core of the plan involves 2 speed workouts a week, one long run, and one mid distance tempo effort. I did my first speed workout on Tuesday it included the following: 800m warm up, 2x1200, 2x800, 4x400, and 6x100, 800 cool down. I ran all repeats at my goal pace of 9:35/mile with 2 minutes of recovery between and the 100’s I ran at my speed interval pace of 9:00/mile with 100m recovery in between. I liked the workout a lot. It was my first real track workout ever and it felt good to go fast. I still had some kick in me after. I knew I could have gone faster, but I stuck to my plan. What took work was not getting distracted off my pace. A few times I found that when my mind wandered, I slowed down. Not because I needed to, but because I wasn’t paying attention to my leg turnover. Besides the fast twitch benefit of speed work, this focus work will help me a great deal. After all, I started this business of running as a marathoner. I never spent much time at all working on short distances. When I run long, it has become natural to disassociate from my body. 2 or 3 hours into a run, it was impossible for me to sustain focus on my footsteps. I think the track workout (sans the ipod) will help me with this. To really perform, I need to stay in touch with what my body is doing and focus how it is feeling.

I did my second speed workout on Friday. First I biked 60 minutes of hill repeats around my house (the 5 Sisters Loop), came home, ate and went to the gym for a treadmill run. Did a half mile warm up, 2x800, 4x400, 4x200, 4x100 all at 30 seconds faster than my goal pace. It was a solid effort and I got through it without too much struggle. I think I’m on my way!

Lastly, to compensate for the fact that I am gunning for a 15K PR on a 10K speed program, I will continue to run over-distance long runs, similar to what I would do for a half marathon. 15k is just long enough to need a good pacing strategy. I will run my long runs in the Race With Purpose fashion of a commute, warm-up, race pacing. I figure that running long runs of 10-13 miles with a good progressive pacing strategy will help me race the 15K distance well.

I have 2 tune up races between now and then, a 5 miler on October 28th and a 4 miler on November 18th . We’ll have to see what I can do at those.

722 days to go.