Finally! A group run! Something I CAN do! This morning in Santa Monica, we met as a team for the first time on Ocean and San Vicente. We circled around in first name alphabetical order to do our introductions, talked about the season basics once more, and we were off for a warm up run up San Vicente. I was curious to see how different IronTeam practices are from the TNT marathon team. Six seasons of the TNT marathon team, I felt pretty confident with my run, but was still excited to learn some new tips and pointers, coming from a long distance triathlon perspective.
After the warm up, we stopped to do some stretches and drills such as high knees, butt kicks, and even some skipping. One of the main focuses of running in the team was efficiency. It was something I learned in the marathon team that we should be having 180 steps a minute. Coach brad emphasized in this morning’s meeting we should be having 90 steps every 30 seconds. Doing the math, it’s the same thing. He said we’re a lazy bunch – we want to get the maximum output with minimum input. Makes sense, because after 12+ hours in an IronMan, the last thing you want to do on your run is waste energy. So on our run, we were supposed to keep tabs on what our cadence is, if anything. Mine was 86 or something. Pretty close.
The team isn’t split up in pace groups like the marathon team. It’s more generalized, like Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced. Beginners have a shorter loop on San Vicente, Intermediate and Advanced do the full loop. It’s also up to us if we want to do intervals or not, which was a bit weird to me because I’m always doing intervals, even if it’s an easy small run. San Vicente is my usual running stomping ground, so it just felt awesome running on it again. It’s less social than the marathon team, but I still had a lot of fun. I used my intervals, so when I finished the course, I wasn’t even that spent. I noticed others a bit more tired, but I don’t think they did intervals either. I’m in no rush. It’s all base training, and I plan to ramp up gradually as planned.
So, what do you think ?