Team Mac

Last night I officially began training with Team Mac. No, I am not training with Rogue for the first time since the Fall of 2004. It's not really weird to make the change because Mac was my coach at Rogue for 3 different groups. My standing PR for the marathon (and half marathon) is from Boston 2006, after a season of training from Mac. I was in the best running shape of my life. Now that he coaches a group on his own, I've decided to go with his workouts rather than the groups that are available at Rogue.

I really like the way Mac runs his workouts. He always knows exactly what pace you are supposed to be running for each interval, and most of the time he makes sure that you are right on pace. He is very attentive as a coach, and even the shortest of workouts can be downright brutal. I like his philosophies on marathon training, and have seen personal success as a result of the hard work put into running his workouts. If I train hard and do what he says to do, I have no doubt that I will see success in the Fall.

Last night, those of us who were not recovering from Boston did a 5k ladder workout. We did 2 miles warm-up, followed by 20 minutes of Mac's drills and other exercises. The ladder was 100-200-300-400-400-300-200-100 at 5k effort with 100 easy jog between. 1 mile cooldown. 5k pace is pretty tough for me right now, so needless to say it completely kicked my ass. I haven't done a real workout in who knows how long. As painful as it was, I loved it!

In no way am I blogging about this to knock the programs offered at Rogue. They have an excellent traning program, and I have enjoyed training in the many groups that I have participated in. The program that I was interested in joining this year wasn't going to work out the way I thought it would, and I wanted to try something different this summer rather than joining a 'fall marathon' group. For summer training, I have done the Rogue Fall group twice and the Rogue Pikes Peak group the summer between them. I still love the folks at Rogue, and am open to joining another group some time in the future...just not this time around.