Tim is my new Running Coach... for better or for worse

I needed new running sneakers... badly. I guess I hit that 300-mile or 400-mile or WHATEVER threshold where the cushioning turns to the consistency of charleston chews and my knees were whimpering "please, Rosie, PLEASE! you need us to be happy if you want to stay out of a walker until at least 60"

Yesterday included a visit to both NikeTown and Marathon Sports. At NikeTown I approached the dude in front of the running sneakers and told him about my problem. He asked, "OK, do you need stability?" Me: "Umm... I dont think so...? not sure." Him: "OK then probably not. So these shoes (points to a full one-third of the shoes) dont have extra stability. You would do well with any of these."

Are you kidding?!?!?? These guys are supposed to specialize in SPORTS and TRAINING and all that cr&*)p. He should at LEAST be able to help me narrow down my needs to fewer than 8 TYPES

So I went to Marathon Sports on Boylston. The woman had me take off my shoes, roll up my pants, and walk up and down the store with her at ground level looking at my feet. Lets just say, this was a much better precision-sports shopping experience. I ended up picking out a pair of Nikes... but I had a coupon for Niketown so I bought the pair there today. (I'm so sorry, Marathon Sports lady!! I wanted to give you the commission, but 25% off was calling the cheapness within the depths of my soul)

To break the shoes in I wanted to do just a short run, but thought it'd be good to do it as fast as possible. I've been doing about nine-and-a-half minute miles recently, so my goal was to do 2 miles at 9 min/mi.

CHECK IT OUT:

8:40 min/mi!! When I finished this chick came on saying "Congratulations! This is [insert the name of some famous runner i've never heard of]. You've reached a new personal best for the mile!" Rock On, Rosie.


I started telling my buddy Tim about my running, and he (being the former High School X-Country Running Captain that he is) gave me a bunch of advice on speed-training. I'll let his words speak for themselves. Included, for illustrative affect, is a pic of tim and me this past halloween

tim: i can give pointers on speed workouts if you need any
rose: yeah pointers = much appreciated
tim: cool. well one thing you can do is do a 3 miler. start off slow for the first 5 minutes. then ramp up to above race pace for the next 5 minutes. then cool down to a slower speed for the next 5 minutes after that, etc. keep switching off
rose: ok interesting
tim: another involves track workouts. get yourself to a track (like the MIT one) and do intervals around the track. you go about 80-90% of how fast you could at top speed. then you take a quick breather and get back out there and do it again. there are a few ways you can structure your intervals...
tim: one example is 200, 400, 800, 800, 400, 200. kind of like a ladder
(one lap around the track is 400 meters)
rose: ok. so 'breather' = stop? or go slow?
tim: stop. i would give yourself 1-2 minutes of rest in between
tim: another way to do it is run like 8 laps around the track, which is 2 miles. but here's how you run it. you sprint the straight aways and then really slowly jog the curves
tim: the purpose of these workouts is to increase your VO2 max, which is the threshold that your body starts losing it in terms of oxygen debt
rose: nice!!
i'm going to do a speed-concentrated run Friday so I'll try this out then
tim: okay. i would only do one speed workout a week
tim: you shouldn't have asked me for running tips. this is going to be like dwayne wade and charles barkley now in the t-mobile fave 5 commercial. HAHA