>How about doing 3 or 4 weekends of 2 hour runs on Saturdays followed >by....10 k RACES on Sunday? > >The purpose here is to get your strength built up through the 2 hour runs >on the Saturday and then to follow that with the DEMAND to produce some >decent pace output in the 10k race setting. With the 2 hour effort you >should be doing 15-18 miles and then on Sunday with warmup and cooldown >another 9 miles!Well, the tale is not yet told, but this weekend I tried to follow George's suggestion just once (3 or 4 times being completely out of the question for my schedule), and was flabbergasted by the result. Yesterday as I posted I did a very hard (hard=hilly, not fast) trail run. I called it 18 yesterday but consultation with the maps shows it was "only" 16.1, but it was 2:37's worth of running anyway. Today was the followup at the Friends of Stevens Creek Trail Trailblazer 10K.
George didn't say what pace I should run the 10K but I was thinking along the lines of AMP, which was 7:45. I thought after yesterday's run I would be VERY pleased to hold that pace; I've never done anything like this before. When I went through the first mile in 7:08, I thought "Holy ----". My amazement continued as, despite various leg/knee pains which I wouldn't have felt in a "normal" race (one without a long run the day before), I managed to hold on to a very respectable pace and finish in 45:55, only 2 1/2 minutes off my P.R.! AND I ran even enough splits (slowest mile 7:33, still well below AMP) that only one person passed me in the entire race - I think that WAS a new P.R. :-) I'm usually the guy making everyone else happy at the end by providing someone to pass.
So as I said, the tale is not told, I don't what effect this will have in the long run, but it was sure an interesting experiment, and one whose results I was assuredly NOT anticipating.
I didn't win the trip to London :-( but to make my day even further quite a few people raised their hands when the organizers were asking how they found out about the race and asked about the Web page (which I sponsored - http://alumni.caltech.edu/~slp/trailblazer.html). So my little bit for the cause was not in vain. :-)
Steve "Trailblazer" Patt
slp@alumni.caltech.edu