Throughout this week I did a three part workout:  a warmup of 1000 meters at a very high stroke rate to get my legs used to working that fast, then a 450 meter, full-out race piece (up from 300 meters last week) still aiming for 1:40/500 pace and low 30 spm.  Finally, another 1000 meters at about the same spm as the race piece.  Hopefully, this will condition my leg muscles to the quick cycle times that will be required and exercise them enough to build the required strength.  My actual times are in a table below.  Note that I was able to get the race pace ALMOST to the target.  The first several hundred meters are faster, down around 1:38, but then I start to die and the pace slows down to about 1:42/500 meters.

                Distance      Time            Pace            Date

1,000m	04:04.3	02:02.1	1/22/2010
450m	01:30.6	01:40.6	1/22/2010
1,000m	04:18.4	02:09.2	1/22/2010
1,000m	04:21.5	02:10.7	1/21/2010
450m	01:30.9	01:41.0	1/21/2010
1,000m	04:17.4	02:08.7	1/21/2010
1,000m	04:20.3	02:10.1	1/20/2010
450m	01:30.6	01:40.5	1/20/2010
1,000m	04:09.0	02:04.5	1/20/2010
1,000m	04:16.6	02:08.3	1/18/2010
450m	01:31.9	01:42.1	1/18/2010
1,000m	04:13.9	02:06.9	1/18/2010

Next week the race piece gets extended to 600 meters (Adding 150 meters per week) and I'll start a longer strength piece at the end of the workout.  I think that I'll drop the warmup piece from 1000m to only 500m.  The rest between pieces will stay the same for now - 5 min between warmup and the race, then 8 min between the race and the strength piece.

Yes I know that I should be doing LOTS more strength training but I'm lazy!  Give me a break!  I don't expect to complete the first of the longer race pieces on Sunday within the target time but I will force myself to finish it...