Trainerroad Goddard + 5 mile brick run - 3/11/12

Still not fully recovered from being sick the past couple days - better, but not quite there.

The next Trainerroad workout was called Goddard, which ended up being a fairly low intensity workout.  Starting with a short warmup, some ILT's of differing powers followed, and then a series of sprint-type surges with some rest in between.  That was followed by a few more ILT drills, and then 2 x 6m spinups.  In the end, a noticably lower intensity workout, but I was ok with that since I'm still feeling under the weather.

I was debating what to do for a run today - just a short 1-2 mile or something more significant.  I ended up decided to head out on my 5 mile loop, and go from there - I could always turn back if I needed/wanted to.  My primary immediate concern was that the past couple days, I've had slight runners knee in my left knee, so I didn't want to make it worse.  I ended up deciding to give a shot to using it as a way to potentially improve form - if I could make a simple change (most likely in left foot placement or overall cadence) and keep it at bay, that might be a way to see in what way my form could be improved that would be otherwise hard to determine.

I did bother me slightly for the first mile and a half or so, but after that, it went away and seemed to stay away.  IT band also felt pretty good overall as well - just a couple moments where I felt it rubbing.  I ended up mostly trying to pay attention to left foot placement (to discern whether I normally plant it just slightly ahead of my column or not) and cadence.  Seemed to work decently well, but I am still searching for the 'groove' of having the proper lean and stride length to hit the pace I'm looking for - I wanted to do this run at an easy pace of 8:45 min/miles, but I found that I'd end up at closer to 8 min/mile when I wasn't paying attention to pace and paying more attention to form.  Of course, that would get the HR up higher than I wanted.  So there is still obviously a lot of work to be done, and it is very possible that any change I need to make is too subtle for me to know on my own, so I'm really looking forward to a video analysis to help point me in the right direction of exactly what needs to be changed - foot placement, cadence, lean, amount of bend @ the knee, etc.

I also started thinking the other day - perhaps I should run short runs in the sandals I have.  Although I've had pretty good fortune with the Nike Free Runs, if I'm looking for better biofeedback about my form, going to something with a thin sole with no toe drop may be beneficial (unlike the NB Minimus that has a lower heel to toe drop than the Free Run's, but a less flexible and more substantial sole overall).