Less than a week to Payton Jordan: Last week's training

The Payton Jordan Invite is just days away (May 2nd), and the nerves are already starting to kick in a little. I'm looking forward to a light week of training after a great last few months behind me. Last week's training was still fairly light coming off the 5 x mile track workout the week before as you can only have so many efforts at that level over the course of a training block. The only training left before the race are some light tempo 1km repeats and a few 200s Friday on the Stanford track. 

It sounds a bit strange, but there are not many races I get more nervous for than the Payton Jordan 10km. Granted, there is not as much on the line for this invite as there are for many of my other races, but the intensity is very high. Heading into any championship race, you have the hope that you will feel comfortable for some percentage of the race, and then you can focus on racing the individuals around you. Even during a major marathon, while intimidating and the most challenging overall endeavor I've taken on to date, you still get to relax for an hour before the pain really starts to set in. Payton Jordan is different. Everybody wants to run fast, so the pace goes out hard, and it stays hard for all of the 25 laps. Going out a 66 seconds per quarter never feels easy, at least not to me. In order to hit a personal best this coming Saturday, I will have to max myself out from start to finish, which means no big swings in pace, probably not even for the finish. That is a lot of pain for twenty seven and a half minutes. But you couldn't ask for a better situation to run fast with the incredible depth of the field and the perfect weather year in and year out. Payton Jordan is the only 10km track race in the world that you can count on every year to go out on IAAF 'A' Standard pace. That is not an exaggeration. I'm going to do my best to take advantage of the circumstances and go for another track PR, and continue my streak of personal bests on the Stanford track which has been going since my redshirt freshman year at Oklahoma State. 

There are a load of other fantastic lineups on Saturday, so head over to Flotrack to catch it all. Thanks again for reading, and feel free to check out last week's training below. Follow me here on Twitter for more updates. 

Week 21	AM	PM	Strength/Drills	Mileage
Monday	11	5	40 minutes	16
Tuesday	5	15 x 200 meters @ 29-30		14
Wednesday	12.5	off	30 minutes	12.5
Thursday	10	5 + drills and strides		14
Friday	5	4 mile tempo @ 19:00 + 6 x 200 @ 28-29		16
Saturday	14	off	30 minutes	14
Sunday	4.5 + drills and strides	off		4.5
TOTAL				91