Punishment and Judgment

As expected, I felt much better on Saturday than I had done on Friday, and there never was a doubt that I would do a hill workout as soon as I stepped through the front door. I think that’s the first time I’ve ever tried to have 3 of those sessions in one week, but my base training is a great help; I didn’t feel tired at all. That changed once I started on the hill sessions, obviously. My heart rate was a bit higher than it was on Wednesday. I can’t tell if that’s because I worked a tick harder or because I still hadn’t recovered entirely from previous hard training days. In any case, the difference during the hill repeats wasn’t very big. It was a lot bigger during the windsprints. Last time my heart rate would typically be around 160 at the end of these, and on Saturday it went up to 170 nearly every time. Mike once mentioned he felt his body “opening up” to a new kind of workout after a few sessions. I don’t really know what that means, but if it’s meaningful then maybe that’s what’s happening to me right now.

As I jogged down the hill after the first session, an older runner came running along. He ran very strongly, and his dog followed at some distance. I saw him again 10 minutes later when I was on my way up for the second repeat, and he came down. I felt a bit silly doing those drills, but kept going. He smiled at me as he passed and said “leg punishment, eh?”. I could only grunt in response. I saw him again later on my way home, but from a distance. I haven’t seen him around before; he probably is on his vacation, but he clearly is a serious runner.

My anaerobic phase starts two weeks from now, but in order to make the transition smoothly I did 3 fast miles for today’s run. A while ago the Mystery Coach mention something called an “Exchange Workout” in Mike’s blog. I think the post has been deleted since because I can’t find it any more, but luckily I’ve got a copy on my own hard drive. It entails 3 miles with 4 sections slow/fast/slow/fast at 0.75 miles each. The “slow” parts are at 5k race pace+45 second, the fast ones are 30 seconds faster than that. In order to prepare for that workout I started out today with 4 slow sections. My 5k race pace from 3 weeks ago was 6:12, and adding 45 seconds to that plus rounding to the next number gives 7:00 pace, and that’s what I tried to do. That wouldn’t be particularly hard, it’s meant to be preparation for the time when the workout starts in earnest. It was also meant to help me in pace judgment, something I’m desperately bad at. As always, I don’t have a track so the workout was done on the road. After 5 easy miles I started on a 1.5 miles long section, then turned around and did the same thing again. I guessed that the HR should be somewhere between 160 and 165 for that, and that’s what I went for. I noticed early on that I was too fast, but felt pretty comfortable at that pace. At the turnaround point I was way ahead of time (despite running slightly uphill), and eased the effort a little bit on the way back, but the road back home was slightly downhill and I covered it in roughly the same time. All in all it took me 19:57, which is 6:39 pace.

* head scratching time*

As far as the effort was concerned, this was much easier than what I expected 6:39 pace to feel like. I wasn’t very tired at the end of that and felt that I could have run the same workout again immediately afterwards. I can give myself a pat on the back as far as the pace went, but I’ve bombed as far as pace judgment went. I think the fact that I’ve never ever run on a track has something to do with that. On the other hand, I’m not really bothered. I’ve almost always been satisfied with the pace I’ve gone out in a race, and that’s what really counts. I want to do the same workout again next week, but have to decide if I want to drop back to 7:00 pace or run it again the same way as today.

The weather is appalling again. Today’s run was done in pouring rain, but that didn’t have any effect on the actual workout. If anything, it helped.

4 Aug: 4 hill repeats, 1:51:35, ~13 miles, avg. HR 148
5 Aug: 11 miles, 1:25:09, 7:44 pace, avg. HR 148, with 3 miles in 19:57 (6:39 pace, HR 160-165)

Weekly mileage: 89+