Thankfully, my refill arrived today in the mail, so I won't be having a massive cardiac event on the roads of Baltimore tomorrow morning. Although, it took a full week for it to arrive, which means that a.) I need to order my next refill twice as early as I think I need to and b.) Medco needs to hire more people so they can fill prescriptions faster. Thankfully my condition isn't so bad that I can't survive (literally) without my medicine for a few days.
Anyway, I'm dosing back up on my meds and should be OK for my long run tomorrow morning. Today I slept in a little and then went out to kill two birds with one stone. I headed out around 10 AM to try my hand at hill sprints. I need to get faster, and one of the ways I'm going to do that is to spend one day a week on interval training. Unfortunately, there's not a track near downtown Baltimore because, well, it's Baltimore and not suburbia. That leaves me with only a few options for speed training:
1. Find a relatively long stretch of road on which to do level intervals. Not a bad otpion and one I will probably experiment with in the coming weeks. But I would think you need a street at least 0.25 miles long with only one or two banking turns (like a track) for it be work. In Baltimore, there are streets that fit this bill, although you then have to factor in intersection traffic, location, and pedestrians. At 6 AM, these should be limited.
2. Do hill sprints to maximize training over a shorter distance per sprint. This is what I have opted for today, and it worked out fairly well.
So we'll see how it goes. Doing speed workouts in the gym on the treadmill sucks, as does running on treadmills in general for me, so anything I can do outdoors is a plus.
Tomorrow is a packed day overall as I'll get up early to get my long run in, then come back to shower and change and head to the office for several hours of catch-up and then CFA studying before treating myself to visiting the tent sale going on down in Harbor East. Falls Road Running is one of the vendors and if the deals are right, I'm on the lookout for a new pair of running shorts. It'll be a nice reward for spending the morning and early afternoon at the office on what should be a day of rest were I not married to my job.
1 comment:
There are a couple of places downtown that may help you with your speedwork. I use the following on occasion.
1)on top of Federal Hill as follows: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=2074240 it is almost exactly 400m same as a track.
2)around Rash Field. Tight turns but and 60m longer than 400m (but if you cut off one of the short ends it is pretty close to 400m.
3)for mile repeats I haven't tried it but I've been considering it. Around Fort McHenry is almost exactly 1-mile as follows: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=2074260
Hope this helps you out.
~b
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