Someone’s gotta help me dig

On Friday I did a whole bunch of 4 minute intervals by myself.  You see, Gillis was racing in Ottawa (he was 10th and first Canadian in 30:18), so there I was digging by myself and then on the 7th interval I ran up on Andrew Yorke in the trails.  He decided to jump in and I ended up running a little faster than I would have on my lonesome.  I decided to run my last three intervals the long way and Yorke would take the short way and meet me for the cool-down.  I ended up running into Yorke 3 minutes into my last interval at 2:58/km and ended up 2:56/km for that interval.  (Mike DelMonte filmed the workout for a thank you follow-up video for the All For The Run contributors so I’ll post it here when it’s done).

When my legs are tired I find it much easier to keep my pace with other people running the workout.  Otherwise it’s easy to let the fatigue get the best of me.  When I’m fresh and hitting my splits it’s not too hard to fly solo, but being towards the end of a 231km (143 miles) week my legs were not fresh.  Point of the story: It’s good to be training for the marathon with Gillis.

This was a productive week, especially considering I wasn’t feeling good at the very beginning.  I had good volume and my workouts were a step in the right direction.  This week will be slightly lower volume before I bring it back up for a couple of weeks.

Watching Ryder Hesjedal make history at the Giro D’Italia (first Canadian to ever win a Grand Tour) today was amazing.  I was hoping to watch it at Cafe Domestique but I didn’t start my 42km run early enough (or I didn’t run fast enough..).  I planned to start at 7:30 (7:40 start) and in my head I thought 2:45 but my body said otherwise and I was out there for almost 3 hours.  It was good to get in the full distance and good to pick up the pace throughout the entire run (second half was 7 minutes faster).  Anyways, when I got in the door Ryder had just started his time trial so I wasn’t leaving the TV.

$1000 1500m bet Milne vs Jeroen update: Jeroen opened with a 3:40 today in Morocco.  Milne still leads with his 3:37.  In other 1500m news, Nathan Brannen ran a PB, 3:34.22, to crush the A standard (3:35.5).  Also, there are some 800’s and 1500’s on tap Monday night in Guelph at St. James.  If you’re in Guelph you should come and check out the races.

I forgot to post this when I first got back from Kenya but here is some video I shot near the start of the Discovery Eldoret Half Marathon.  Very competitive to say the least.