Corporate Challenge Countdown (CCC)

Since others have done a nice job of leading up high quality workouts, I have barely had to coordinate anything so for this season.  That has been great!  Thank you.  But in an attempt to rationalize my spot in the running group, that is about to change.  Ok, that's not the reason, but I believe that we could use a group plan for the next month:

Four Tuesdays from now is the Chase Corporate Challenge.  Several TRYers will be taking part in the 'challenge' for our various companies, so lets do a training cycle building everyone up for a successful event.  We will build our interval choices and the length of our runs to (hopefully) be in an ideal spot to deliver a PR on June 19th.

My suggested training plan -

May 29th: 4 mile total run with six 1/4 mile intervals.  Mile warm-up, 1/4 on, 1/4 off six times, leaving a 1/4 mile cooldown.  Meaning 1 1/2 miles of exertion.

June 5th: 4 1/2 mile total run with four 1/2 mile intervals.  Mile warm-up, 1/2 on, 1/4 off four times, leaving a 3/4 mile cooldown.  Meaning 2 miles of exertion.

June 12th: 5 mile total run with 2 one mile intervals, followed by one 1/2 mile interval.  Mile warm-up, 1 on, 1/2 off, 1 on, 1/2 off, 1/2 on, leaving a 1/2 mile cooldown.  Meaning 2 1/2 miles of exertion.

June 19th: The Chase Corporate Challenge - 3.5 glorious miles down and back on the least scenic race course that you'll ever see.

So, this will build our total length and our miles of exertion within that total for the next 3 weeks and will give each of us a great idea on what our race pace should be for the 19th.  Each Tuesday, plan your hydration and your food as you would on race day...because we are running at a similar time to the race start time and that way we can really figure out what we need and what works for us to push our limits on late afternoon on a Tuesday night.

The suggested repeats and mileage are a mid-level plan.  As always you can add extra or take away a repeat to suit your individual needs.  Please consider aligning your training plan to this group plan - using those tweaks if needed.  I can't make you play along, but the more people that do it, the more fun it will be and the more challenging and uplifting it will be for everyone.  For anyone new to intervals, ask me or the other experienced TRYers any questions you may have about them.

For those of you who don't like our intervals because you don't like to be near the back of the pack or don't like to be last...remember what Ricky Bobby said:

If you ain't first, you're last!  So, don't worry about being the 9th or 10th person out of the 10 that show up any giving week.  Because, honestly, there is Kelly, and there are 9 losers.  So, placement among the losers is irrelevant.  And tweaking the advice I quoted last week - don't focus on where you are in the group you're running with.  Think of all the people that aren't running.  You are running faster and farther and harder than millions of people that don't run on that day.  So, please don't get hung-up on being last.  Every person on the planet (except one) has faster runners than them.  Embrace your place in the pack and work on improving your own performance against the clock.  Not against the arbitrary people that happened to show up for our training run (or in your next race).

Here's Ricky Bobby saying it much better than I ever could -

And a reminder: if you want to help out with the Liverpool Area Relay For Life, sign up (for free) through the team website.  Multiple people have said they were interested but haven't signed up.  So, I'm confused on why I have to beg people every year that plan on doing it to physically sign up?  Please sign up.  It's very hard for our team captains to coordinate things when they don't know how many people are going to show up.