The coach, Steve Sisson, assesses Team Rogue’s Race Prep 3 for the Portland Marathon

This is a follow on to my post of my own experience with Race Prep 3, undoubtedly the toughest workout of the season for Team Rogue.

Steve discusses what we thought would be a good measure of a successful workout and also how he felt about his own run.

Also, Damon … one of two people I’ve been running with consistently this season had a tough day but pulled through. He’s just gotten back from a slight injury but he should be good by the time we run Portland in 5 weeks.

Race Prep 3: Didn’t nail it but I can’t complain too much

Today was undoubtedly the toughest workout of the season for Team Rogue. Here is the description:

1.5M Warm-Up
1M Build to Top Speed at Track
2M Recovery
5M @ MGP w/ 3-5 min recovery
4M @ MGP
5 to 6M Hills
6M Continuous Progression Run Track

• 2M @ MGP
• 2M @ HMGP
• 2M @ 10K (26.15)

1.5M Cooldown
Total: 27.5M

After my workouts the few months I decided to drop my training paces from a 2:55 marathon target to a 2:50, which makes each of my paces around 10 seconds a mile faster. Going into today’s run I knew it would be very difficult so anything I could manage once I got on the track without completely blowing up would have been a victory. I just couldn’t manage it once we hit the 10k part, I was just a little slow at the HMGP as well but all in all this is the best I’ve ever run this workout so I’m pleased. My 2:50 target paces are:

• MGP: 6:30
• HMGP: 6:10
• 10k: 5:50

Here’s how it actually went:

Mile on Track: 5:35
5M @ MGP Pace: 6:23
4M @ MGP Pace: 6:27
Track MGP 1 6:27
Track MGP 2 6:33
Track HMGP 1 6:11
Track HMGP 2 6:13
Track 10k 1 6:45
Track 10k 2 6:35

It was amusing, as soon as finished the last mile targeting half marathon pace instead of speeding up I just slowed down. It was really nice to have some of the people not racing Portland on the track handing out water and Gatorade and more than that encouraging us to keep pushing. I could have blown up a lot earlier if Mike hadn’t been there with his spatula threatening to scrape me off the track. Thanks Mike, Ken, Mus, Kristen for the support.

Steve has been running with us so we can’t really complain about the workouts anymore. I recorded a video interview of him after the workout that I’ll post later this weekend.

5 Weeks to Portland, 4 Weeks to Toronto. GO TEAM!