Running Workouts with Graphs Pt. 4

Thursday 5/23

2 sets

2 miles @ hard effort

4 min rest

Did a nice long warm up before this one. This was a confidence building workout to see what paces I could hold for the Bow Lake Dam 15k and the Market Square 10k, not to mention, to get some intensity on the legs leading into the Mount Washington Auto Road Race. I wanted to be a little faster and more consistent on these, but nonetheless, some great training for the all road races I have coming up.

Friday 5/24

Run Locke Trail Loop, clockwise

4.5 miles, 600ft

Crushed this. Legs felt good, and the goal was to just get some easy effort. I ran the loop in about 49 minutes, which was around the time I have been running it in, but the effort felt much lower.

Monday 5/27

Parker Mountain, standard lap

3.6 miles, 740 ft

Standard lap up Parker Mountain, which is straight up as soon as you leave the trailhead. I figure if I can charge up this without issue, it’s only going to help at Mount Washington. That being said, Parker’s climb is about a mile to the summit, while the auto road will be 7.5 miles…But it’s only one hill!

The goal here was to keep the heart rate in my zone 2 sweet spot, which for me, I consider anything from 135-155bpm, based off lab testing, heart rate reserve, Maffetone numbers, and lot and lots of experimenting on myself.

Thursday 5/30

3 rounds for time:

800m run

10 sandbag shoulders @ 100

I couldn’t get moving on anything this day and was really procrastinating my workout. Eventually, after a 2 mile easy warm up, I did a high intensity workout in one of my favorite, and most effective formats. Run an interval, then lift something kinda heavy for a medium amount of reps, and repeat without any built in rest.

This was felt a lot harder than it looks on paper. My heart rate felt like it was spiked the whole time, but when I was running and would look down at my watch, it was always lower than expect so I tried to pick up the speed. I had 5 rounds in mind when I started, but after 2 it was clear 3 would be all I needed today.

Saturday 6/1

Bow Lake Dam 15k

I saw the signs for this race a few years ago and the random distance caught my eye and I’ve wanted to do this ever since. It’s a lap around Bow Lake, a little over 9 miles.

When I lined up at the starting line, I realized this was probably my longest road run since 2022, when I did a half marathon in the lead up to a 50k.

The stretch goal was 1:15, with a safe goal of 1:20. I came in at like 1:20:22, and most importantly, I crushed the big hill climb 6 miles into the 9+ mile course. I tried to negative split this race, meaning running the back half faster than the first, which I did, but was a bit too conservative in the beginning to make up any time and sneak in under 1 hour 20 minutes.

You can see when compared to my easy runs my average heart rate and max heart rate is about 20 bpm higher.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain