This is a guest post article written by Anna, writer and treadmill tester for RunReviews, a project dedicated mostly to treadmill reviews and treadmill workouts . Thanks Anna for the great workout – I can’t wait to use it when training for the Charlottesville Fall Classic 10k this fall!

Speed intervals are excellent to improve a runner’s strength, speed and endurance. I believe every runner who completed successfully the beginner stage aims to achieve higher speed goals.

I discovered that by using a treadmill I can improve my results faster and more efficient (without the need of a professional trainer by my side).

In this article I want to share with you 2 Speed Interval Workouts I’ve used so far (and which can be customized on any treadmill) that helped me improve my 10k time.

More »

This past Sunday I did one of the most useful training sessions I possibly could have done for my upcoming triathlon (Charlottesville Sprint, 6/27/2010). I attended Tri2Bmore’s triathlon racing clinic, where local coach Liz Flynn (www.tri2bmore.com) and her team taught 25 aspiring triathletes techniques for racing in a multisport event.

The day started at 7:00am at a local outdoor pool with introductions, a bike check, and body marking. Then the 25 of us (mostly women, interestingly) broke up into two waves (WAVE ONE RULES!) and started in on the clinic. My group was first in the pool for a half-hour session on the open water swim. Coach Liz had set up buoys in the water for us to swim around, and we started by practicing sighting, first with our eyes open under water, then with our eyes closed. Closing our eyes simulated the murky water we will be facing on race day, and made the sighting practice more realistic. We were also taught how to “corkscrew” around the buoys, which sounds difficult but once you get the hang of it it’s easy to see how much faster it is! The idea is that when you reach a turn at a buoy, instead of continuing with a forward crawl, you do a corkscrew stroke (flipping onto your back for a stroke, then continuing the flip back onto your stomach). This helps to turn you around without slowing down!

Swimming in a big group all at once was a great experience to have before race day. Having never swum in a big group like that before, I was nervous about how things would go on race day, but now I know that I don’t have (much) to worry about! Coach Liz also gave us some tips on how to conserve energy for the bike and run (”The swim is a means to the bike, the bike is a means to the run, and the run is the race”), and how to be prepared for getting our goggles kicked off or having water get into them.

After the swim session, Wave 1 headed back to the field where our bikes and bags were and learned about transitions. Two veteran triathletes explained to us about what we would need at each transition, what to expect as far as set-up, and showed us how they did their transitions. After their demo, it was our turn! We set up our race areas, put on our caps and goggles, spun around a few times and did some pushups (to get our HRs up!), and jogged into “T1″, where we put on socks, bike shoes, and a helmet, and jogged our way over to the mount line with our bikes. After a few hundred feet of pedaling we reached the dismount line, and then it was back to the transition area for “T2″. After pulling on a pair of running shoes, putting on our race numbers (we got this really cool race number belt from the clinic people), and grabbing a handheld water bottle, we jogged a few yards and were done with the transition practice. What a great way to get us ready for race day!

After the two sessions it was around 9:30am and time for our mock race! After a “pre-race meeting” wave 1 got in the water, treaded water for 2 minutes, and then we were off! We did 6 loops of the buoys, a 12 mile bike ride (6x a 2m course), and a 2 mile run. I got kind of lost on the run course, and ended up cutting about 3/4ish of a mile off of it. Whoops! Other than that, it went great! The swim was really easy, I kicked butt on the bike (lapped a few people, even!) at about 17mph on a moderately hilly course. Transitions were no problem, although I kind of failed at remembering to put on sunscreen. Oops. At 10:30 am when it was time for the run and 90 degrees out (or at least it *felt* that hot), my legs were a little dead. The first mile of the run was rough, but it was starting to get easier as I kept going.

I think I’m ready for next weekend when I’ll be doing .3 mile swim, 16mi bike, and a 5k run. After the race clinic I feel confident! Thanks to Coach Liz for putting on this great clinic. It was *so* well organized, we got great goodie bags, and so much useful information. The price was very reasonable as well for the quality and amount of instruction that we received. Above all, it was fun! I’m hoping I’ll be able to go to more of her events this summer!

A week ago I opened my mailbox to find this:

A representative from Sony had contacted me and asked if I was interested in trying out one of their new products, the Sony W Series Walkman MP3 player. Of course! The idea is really cool – instead of having a set of headphones attached by a wire to the mp3 player that you carry, Sony has slimmed things down by putting the mp3 player right on the earbuds, negating the need for a long, dangly cord. The two earbuds are connected by a flexible wire that curves around the back of your head.

I was interested to see how I’d like this new setup. I figured either it would be really good, or really bad. After a week of testing, I’ve decided that Sony did a really great job on designing a pair of dangly-cordless headphones. That said, I think that I’ll be sticking to my iphone for most of my runs.

Software

After unpacking the box and reading the directions, I tried to sync music to the player using their instructions. It doesn’t work with mac! You have to use their special software in order to do the syncing, and there is no mac version (that I know of). Luckily I have VMWare on my mac, so I had a “Windows Machine” that I could use. On the PC things were easy! You just drag and drop into folders and then you’re set to go. Some of my songs didn’t transfer properly, though, and I’m not sure why this was.

Controls

One thing I was very curious about was how the controls would work without (a) a visual display or (b) a hand-held controller. Sony’s solution was to put buttons on the bottoms of the earphones.

Sony W Series Controls

I don’t know about you all, but usually by mile 3 my brain is zoned out.  Zen, wandering thoughts with no clear direction are what fill my head. But give me a more complicated task — and I use complicated very loosely here — and things get hairy. My math fail from a few weeks ago is evidence of that!  So I was really afraid that using controls that I couldn’t see would be an issue.  The main controls – skip, play, pause – are very easy to learn and use without being able to see them. They’re on this little slider that is very intuitive, slide forward/backward to skip, hold forward to change playlist, and press in to play/pause. The volume was a little trickier, only because I would forget which direction was louder. Maybe having different shapes for the two of them would help? Sony tried this, there’s a little dot on the +, but it’s hard to feel, especially mid-stride.

Audio Quality

The audio quality on these was amazing! My songs sounded so much better than they do on the iPhone. Range of volume was good, too. I could make things quiet enough that I could hear what was going on around me on my runs, but they can also go really loud if you want them to.

Earbud fit

The headset came with 3 different sizes of earbuds. I started with the medium, but after a run in those where I had to keep shoving the buds back in my ear I switched to the larger buds, and that worked a lot better. They were snug and they didn’t bounce around. The buds are the “in-ear” kind, so if that bothers you then this headset is not for you. I found them pretty comfortable.

Looks/Construction

These are VERY well put-together. They feel solid and durable, and they didn’t skimp on materials. The battery life is GREAT – they really do last forever (the box says up to 11 hours, I’ve put about 7ish hours on them and they’re still playing) and you can get 90 minutes off a 3 minute charge (I tested this, I got a little over 90 minutes). The only thing about them is that because the MP3 player is part of the headphone set, the part of the headphone that houses the music player is pretty big. I looked pretty silly, I think — like I was trying to wear two giant bluetooth headsets at the same time.

Conclusion

This headset is awesome for what it is. If you hate having cords dangling, this is a great piece of electronics. The price isn’t bad at $50 dollars, and it holds 2GB of music, which is pretty good. For me, I think I’ll stick with my iPhone during my outside runs – I feel safer knowing I can call if I get hurt or lost. I like using this headset for treadmill runs, though, because I don’t have to worry about yanking my iPhone off the “dashboard” of the treadmill. One major advantage to the Sony W Series is that it allowed me to skip songs much easier than my iPhone did, because with the iPhone strapped to my arm I am basically stuck with whatever comes on. I liked having the freedom to skip songs.

Definitely recommend for those who hate cords! Thanks Sony!

I recently bought this top from one of my absolute favorite running sites – RunningWarehouse - because it was on sale and I need more sleeved tops for summer (Gotta protect that skin from the sun!). The description said it had a “Burn-out Mesh Back” which I didn’t really understand until it came in the mail:

See all those holes? They wick sweat like none other! The shirt is a bit looser fitting than what I normally wear, but I think this helped keep me cool in the 80-90 degree weather we’ve been having.

I was worried that the piping along the sleeves and hemline would chafe or itch, but they ended up being fine! I think the piping helped to keep the shirt from riding up, too

All in all, this is an awesome shirt that I can’t wait to wear the heck out of this summer. For twenty dollars, I’m tempted to buy another!

There are still a few left at RunningWarehouse – Click here!

Wow, what a week! Things on DailyMile are really heating up. The weekly challenges (created by RunTalkRadio’s Thomas N have been amazing so far – I look forward to them so much, and they’re always creative and fun. One of the best things about them is that they create quite the conversation in the DailyMile community!

(By the way, RunTalkRadio is amazing. What a fun, informative, and hilarious site!)

So imagine my surprise when this week the challenge had my name on it! My running friend Stephanie (who went from 0 miles to running her first 50k in less than a year ) was the challenge honoree last week, and being the sweetheart that she is she recommended that this week’s challenge be about me! Check out the awesome artwork for the challenge:

The challenge is called the Kate M Haiku Challenge, and participants are tasked with running 5.75 miles and then writing a Haiku poem about their run. If you’ve blocked out your high school poetry unit as I have, Haiku are poems that have a set number of syllables per line, specifically 5 – 7 – 5 (get it? That’s why you run 5.75 miles!)

I am so excited to be part of this week’s RunTalkRadio challenge – thanks Stephanie and RTR! It’s been so fun to read everyone’s poems coming in. Here are some samples!

Plus we have some DMers who went above and beyond:

Seven miles today.
After yesterday’s repeats?
I must be stupid.

Promise of sunshine
Was a cruel, cruel lie
F*** you, weatherman.

– Jay P.

Another 8 miles
The same shit different day
Hamster on a wheel

Warmer than I thought
Shoulda worn just a tee shirt
Cooked in my own juice

More rain on the way
But today I did beat it
Dry shoes tomorrow

Shin still seems better
And so does my attitude
Better days ahead

A haiku challenge
But run five point seven five?
I like integers

– Chaz H.

My non-runner (but possible convert? I’m working on it) friend is crazy good at haiku and wrote me this one:

don’t run too much
but kate makes awesome baked goods
so here’s a haiku

I can’t claim my poetic contribution is quite as awesome as everyone else’s, but:

There once was a challenge to do
That asked for a poem impromptu
I sat down to do it
But once I got through it
Realized it should be haiku
– Kate M

Whoops :P