Acceleration

After spending the last few weeks doing those insanely long double headers, I tried to inject a little bit of pace into my running. I don’t have time for an anaerobic phase, and I wasn’t planning on doing one anyway – I don’t see the point of anaerobic training for an ultra. But I do have an eye on the 10k next week. For some strange reason I’ve never run a 10k race before, so I guess it’s going to be a PR no matter what. On the other hand I don’t want an embarrassingly slow time on my sidebar, so I’d better get into gear.

Saturday was all about taking it easy after the combined 40 miles from the two preceding workouts. At least that was the plan, but not for the first time I found the legs moving faster than the head intended. I clearly remember the times when I had to go all out to run a workout at sub-8:00 pace, after all it’s less than 2 years ago. I still can’t quite get my head around the idea of running 11 easy miles and ending up with 7:45 pace. Sure, it wasn’t exactly recovery pace, but the effort was nice and relaxed, and I certainly didn’t strain myself. The only thing I added into the mix were 10 strides, and for the first 3 or 4 it felt as if I were running through a swamp. The legs weren’t tired as such, but they felt very stiff and slow moving. They did loosen up eventually, and maybe that’s what caused the pace increase on the way home. The weather was very nice, btw. For the first time in months I brought along a pair of shades, and I got good use out of them too. It didn’t stop me from being caught by one of those scattered rain showers towards the end of the run though.

I added a few hours working in the garden after lunch, and could gradually feel my left hamstring tighten up. A wiser person would have stopped the yard work then, I guess, but I kept going for a couple of hours. Luckily there was no sign of trouble the next morning. I don’t quite understand my muscles, but as long as they keep propelling me forward, I won’t complain.

As mentioned at the beginning of this post, I plunged back into some faster paces for Sunday’s workout. I couldn’t decide between mile repeats or a continuous tempo run, but the weather made up my mind for me. The forecast had predicted rain and gusts of up to 70 mph, and while it never got anywhere as bad as that it was windy enough to send me back to Ard-na-Sidhe, and that automatically meant mile-repeats, back and forwards on the road between the kids’ school and the posh hotel. I did the same workout 3 weeks ago, so I had something to compare this one to. Back then I got slower and slower with each repeat and today I was determined to avoid the same mistake. I wanted to stay away from getting anaerobic, which meant heart rates in the high 160s for the early repeats and low 170s for the later ones, though I never use the heart rate monitor to dictate the pace; it’s strictly a tool for measurement. I concentrated on staying relaxed for the first effort and came through in 6:34, which felt good. I tried the same effort on the second repeat but was rather dismayed to clock a time of 6:50. Doubts started to appear in my mind, but I got slightly reassured when the third repeat was faster again in 6:45. After that uneven start the rest of the workout fell into place with splits of 6:43, 6:40 and 6:34. I’ve yet to learn to run them more evenly, but I preferred getting faster for the later repeats rather than slower. The average time was 6:41, about 4 seconds quicker then 21 days ago. I guess I would have taken that.

I’d like to think that I can run faster than that next Sunday, but if I have to strain to reach that pace during mile repeats with recovery breaks in-between, how am I going to manage in a continuous effort? That race-day adrenaline better be good stuff.

3 Mar: 11 miles, 1:25:25, 7:45 pace, avg. HR 149, including 10x100 strides
4 Mar: 10 miles, 1:16:10, 7:37 pace, avg. HR 155, 6 “mile” repeats in 6:34, 6:50, 6:45, 6:43, 6:40, 6:34

Weekly mileage: 86.5 miles