800 Repeats and American Idol

Today is my normal speed day where we do a workout called ATP. This is a program that my running group participated in back when we all first got into marathon when we were part of a program called USA Fit. If you are new to marathon and would like some help, guidance and running partners, this is a great beginner program. It won't get you a fast race, but it will get you to the finish line. Anyway, the ATP program was added to USA Fit to help those that were a little more advanced to get some speed work added to their program. We took this and altered it a bit for our purposes. As a group, we have done it off and on now for many years. Oh by the way, when I say we, I mean the members of Marc Fit. This is a spin-off group of a bunch of us that met 6-7 years ago doing USA Fit here in San Diego. The link is to a blog that is very dated and not updated any more. If anyone is interested in more info, I can fill you in (and maybe convince Marc to keep his blog more up to date).

Wow! I didn't intend to do any advertising for these groups, but hey, they are responsible for helping me get to where I am today. So today was ATP with Marc Fit. Only myself and one other person showed up so instead of doing the ATP program, we decided to do a warm up, 5x800 and then a cool down. I haven't done 800s in a while so I was a bit unsure of the pacing. I did 3:02, 2:53, 2:54, 2:48 and 2:43 all with a 100m walk for recovery. Not great, but not horrible. I'll take it.

Friday is my fitness testing. Once this is done, I will do 2 speed sessions a week for the next 4-5 weeks. That will take me up to my taper for RnR. I have found that during my taper, cutting back on distance is important (as everyone knows), but doing this while also keeping up the intensity. I still push hard to keep my body and mind in tune with the speeds I'm looking for. At this point, I'm shooting for a 3:20 for the next race, but if the weather corporates and my running buddy (who is way faster then me, but currently out of shape) and I feel good, we will pick up the pace at some point and see what we can do.

American Idol this week was interesting. As expected, Simon hated almost every performance. He claims to like country music, but over the years, he has hated nearly every performance that has sounded remotely country. A couple of weeks ago, I missed the Tuesday show because my Divo forgot to record it. I found a wonderful website for that situation that allows you to listen to and watch the performances for the night. Check out rickey.org if you missed a show or want to watch some performances again. He covers a lot of shows on his site so you can catch up on a lot of stuff if you missed it. Here's my order from the performances tonight.

1. David A.
2. David C.
3. Michael
4. Carly
5. Syesha
6. Brooke
7. Jason
8. Kristy
9. Ramiele

We'll see what tomorrow brings. Personally, I feel the bottom three can go in any order. After that I think it's Syesha's turn. If this actually happens, the final 5 should be great and make for some very entertaining weeks leading up to the finale.