SRR Track
You must be a SRR member to participate in the workouts regularly but if you are considering track/SRR and would like to check us out, you are welcome to come to a session as a guest.
Jan - Feb 2026:
These workouts are held at the MIT Indoor Track (located inside the Zesiger Center Building on the 3rd floor). Just enter the building (no earlier than 7:00) and tell the attendant at the main desk that you are with the Somerville Road Runners for the track workout. They will allow you past the desk. From there you go up the steps to the 3rd floor. We meet at the far end of the track from the door. There is a bathroom on the way up the stairs, next to the area that overlooks the pool.
Please contact Coach Joe O'Leary if you have any questions about track workouts.
Pace chart is located here. Look up your 5k race time or pace on the far right and you can see your complete list of recommended paces. If you do not have a 5K race time, but have some other race times, there are alternate ways to determine your paces. more on that below.
About our pace terminology:
We use the pacing system designed by legendary coach Jack Daniels. It assigns each runner 3 sets of paces corresponding to a desired intensity. The paces are:
THRESHOLD - About your one-hour race pace
INTERVAL - VO2 max pace. About the pace you could hold in a race that lasts 10-15 minutes
REPEAT - About the pace you could in a race lasting 3-4 minutes
You can determine your pace set using one of the many online calculators. For example, go here and enter a known race distance and time. Then click on the “Training” tab below to see your paces. (I suggest ignoring the “Easy” tab. We don’t use it in workouts and frankly, I find it faster than I like to run on most days)
Tuesday May 26 - 7:00 PM at HORMEL STADIUM in Medford
This week we are doing PR night at the same place we hold the 26x1 mile Relay. Hormel Stadium in Medford. There is plenty of parking around the track area so that should not be an issue.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/SGtX4873nQipz5Uz7
Since this is our first night at Hormel, I admit I have no idea how it is going to go. I have no idea who is typically there on a Tuesday evening at 7:00. We have the go-ahead to use it but that doesn’t mean there won’t be some event going on there which nobody told us about. So this will be a bit of a cross-your-fingers experience. If anything goes wrong – like there is some sort of big event there that nobody told us about then my back-up workout idea (which I admit would be a poor substitute) was a 2.5 mile tempo run around MacDonald Park. I used to do weekly runs on this loop there years ago so it’s not a bad place for a workout. But let’s just hope all is well at the track.
I will start the announcements at 7:00 PM on the dot. I will keep the them as short as possible, 2-3 minutes tops. The first heat will start at 7:10 PM.
The heats are structured from fastest to slowest. I tried to structure them so that the groups would be tightly packed but there was not always a good breaking point. I need each of you to be aware of the start time for your heat and be warmed up and ready to go right at the time it begins.
My hope here is that some of you faster folks will be ready toto pace anyone in the slower heats after you have recovered. (If anyone wants a pacer, that is) I especially need a few people to be ready for the last heat because we have a large spread i seed times is a bit larger than in the earlier heats;
Here are the planned heats
7:10 PM: Heat #1: 4:50 – 5:10
Nicolo Cogno
Matthew Cuomo
Will Faden
John Cabana-Johnson
Teddy McNulty
Doug Lipinski
christian quigley
Thomad Hannon7:17 PM: Heat #2: 5:25 – 5:50
Christopher Blake
Michael Tautiva
Griffin Rule
Noah Dunleavy
Corey Watanabe
Frances Duncan
Lionel Bertschy
Laura Dissly
James Di
Farid Kadyrov
Derek Lo
Anish Nair7:25 PM: Heat #3: 5:59 – 6:05
Jamie Stevenson
Isabella Gama
sophia Janowitz
Kathleen Larson
Diane Sutyak
Andrew Van Horn7:33 PM Heat #4: 6:30 – 7:00
Mariah Tinger
Amy Bruce
Courtney Towson
Jan-Willem Maessen
Doreen Lwanga
AJ Raghuraman7:42 PM Heat #5: 7:30 – 10:05
Ben Michno
Scott Brook
Andrea Mercado
Kim LundTuesday - June 2nd - 7:00 PM - Hormel Track
I am told that the Hormel track is actually being used for an event this week. So we will not be able to run there but we WILL still meet there.
Instead of doing the workout I had scheduled, we will all do that loop of MacDonald Park that I linked you to last week.
https://www.mapmyrun.com/routes/view/6725481278/
If you are running the 26 x 1 this weekend, I recommend that make this loop be a mostly easy loop but somewhere along the way, include anywhere from 4 to 6 hard pickups of 1 minute in which you run as close to your 1 mile race pace as possible. Once the 1 minute is up, return to easy pace for as long as you like. Keep running easily but let yourself recover. I don't want to tire you out with this, I just want to have you accustomed to running that pace
If you are NOT running the 26x 1 mile this weekend I recommend that you make the entire 2.5 mile loop be a single tempo run.
That's "tempo". Not "threshold" In our terminology "threshold" is a specific pace found on the chart, calculated from your race times. But the word "tempo" refers a range of paces, being anywhere from as fast as threshold to as slow as your marathon race pace. The pace of a tempo run is adjusted to suit the distance you are running at tempo. You aim for intensity and finishing without feeling wiped out and let the pace come to you.
So for 2.5 miles in one block you could probably hold something close to your THRESHOLD pace without really having to dig too hard. But if you are feeling ambitious and if you generally target longer type races, this could even be an opportunity to make it be a longer tempo: Ease back the intensity a bit from threshold and run 2 loops instead of 1. Just hold back the intensity enough to finish feeling strong and not wiped out.
Longer tempo runs like this are the one thing I wish that I had done more of when I was younge