Geeked on Sports!

It seems like this past week everyone I know (or sorta know) was just geeked out on sports. Jameson is killing it getting ready for Nationals and pumped on the 'Bolts, Beth is lighting it up in 'The Hills' and obviously isn't playing, Gunner put in his biggest mileage week by almost DOUBLE!!!!! his previous highest total, Lucho is turning into some sort of Zen master under the watchful eye of 'Bob' and Uli, Geb set a new marathon world record in Berlin (Beijing pollution my ass!), and things have been pretty sweet for me as well.
Last week was my biggest week ever at 65 miles. During the week I covered more ground on my feet than I did in my car. 4 of the 6 sessions were quality efforts, including short max effort hill repeats, a tempo run, a 3x2 miler, and a 20 mile long run with 3x1 mile at 7:00/mile on 1 minute rest at miles 7, 8, and 9 and then again at miles 18 and 19. Today was more of the same with 8x800 meter repeats in 3:40 on 400 meters in 1:55. Today I just ran how fast I thought 6:30 pace should feel and was pleasantly surprised. I was pace checking against my Garmin and almost always felt worse after seeing the pace than when I just rolled along and pushed through the interval. This whole 'external limiters' concept that Lucho has been wrestling with has some validity I think. I have the sweetest deal going: Lucho buys the books, sift through for the good stuff, and I can spend my evenings watching Entourage and Mad Men!
I posted the workout from this morning and last week's tempo run below. Today's workout really got me pumped. 11 miles including warm up, average pace 7:36 at 156 average BPM. I'll take it.











Anyways, with 10 1/2 weeks left until the race day, I am starting to get excited for Vegas!

Musically, I haven't been listening to much lately. Now that Gunner is done triathlon for the season, he has joined me on a couple of workouts and in an effort to get better handle on my internal dialogue I'm trying to get away from needing to listen to music during the heavy efforts. Today I was mindful of the cadence of my footfall and tried to keep the rhythm consistent which was kinda hypnotic and worked out out pretty well. I did download a PodRunner podcast and listened to it during last week's tempo run. PodRunner is pretty much just a hour of techno music at a certain BPM mixed by some dude specifically for running, spin class, whatever. I'm not really into techno, house music etc. but the consistent BPM was actually pretty helpful and after a while I wasn't really listening to the music anyways. It was more to try and drown out the little voice trying to tell me to stop! I counted my footfalls at 6:22 pace at 146 per minute so I dl'd a PodRunner podcast at 148. It's called Paradiddle-Drums from the Deep. Check it out. TV on the Radio has a new album out now so I'm sure that next week there'll be something here from those cats.