Slow and Fast

It’s less than 6 weeks to the marathon, and I’m starting to feel slightly nervous about it whenever I think about it. I shouldn’t be. My training has been solid and I’m not a complete newcomer anymore, but the butterflies in my stomach won’t go away. Six weeks. That’s nothing. I’ll be crossing that line in no time.

There’s still some work to be done until then, though. After the exchange workout on Sunday I ran 10 very easy miles on Monday. My recovery paces are all over the place these days, and I don’t take too much notice of them; I run purely by feel. I had another all-time low as far as the HR went on Monday, despite the fact that I ran 28 seconds per mile faster than the equivalent run on the previous Monday. Figure that one out. I was definitely happy with the way it went. The first 2 or 3 miles were stiff and awkward, as always, but once I got into my stride I just ran along seemingly effortless. It’s good to feel fit.

I got a bit more ambitious today, and opted for half-mile intervals. Why half-miles? Why not. I can’t remember the last time I did those, probably one or two workouts when I was following the Pfitzinger plan, and this morning they sounded line fun. How hard can it be to run 800 meters at the time. How much recovery? 2 minutes. Why? Because that’s the first figure that came into my head. I was quite relaxed about those details. How accurate was the distance (remember, no track)? Well, I ran 4 minutes at supposed 8-minute pace a few days ago to measure it, and that’s perfectly accurate, right? Was the road flat? Er, no. It was bowl-shaped, each repeat started with a slight downhill and ended with a slight uphill, and the middle bit was up-and down as well. Sorry. They don’t really do flat road around here, unless you want to run on the main national road, which I don’t.

I ran 3 miles as a warm-up, and then got going. I’ll give you the numbers first, and then my thoughts about them.

3:16, 3:05, 3:09, 3:21, 3:09, 3:05, 3:06, 3:04.

The first one was more of a warm-up effort than anything else, and the fourth one was my fault for totally losing concentration and running much too slow. If you ignored those two, the pace becomes a mot more even. That botched fourth repeat was a blessing in disguise, because after that I finally started to put my mind to the task at hand and managed to tune into the effort. It was like the first 4 were prelude and the last 4 the actual workout. I hadn’t planned on a fixed number of repeats, but the general wisdom is that you should cover 3-4 miles at the fast pace, which meant 6-8 repeats. After the fourth repeat I shortly played with the idea of quitting, but thankfully kept going. However, it wasn’t until the middle of the sixth repeat that I had a kind of epiphany and realised that instead of pushing as hard as I could I should concentrate on form and relax a bit instead of mindlessly pushing as hard as I could. The figures after that speak for themselves, I managed the best times in my last few repeats despite the fact that the legs got more and more tired. In fact, after 6 repeats or so I felt like becoming addicted to the pain, which is why I did 2 two more. For those last two I just went through the same mantras in my head, “push those hips forward”, and “lift those knees”. Later I added “swing those arms”, and that all helped. I’m not actually surprised that running was both faster and easier once I started concentrating on form because I’ve read about that before, but it was an eye-opener all the same. Now all I have to do it remember the same thing in my next race. Maybe I should write it on the back of my hands to remind myself. Anyway, I felt tempted to add 2 more repeats after the eighth but called it a day because 4 miles at speed is supposed to be enough, and since I’m new to that kind of thing I didn’t want to overdo things. If the legs are all springy and fresh tomorrow I know I should have done more, but in all honesty I doubt it. I’m in for some slow and stiff early miles, I just know it.

27 Aug

10 miles, 1:23:14, 8:19 pace, avg. HR 132

28 Aug

10 miles, 1:17:59, 7:47 pace
with 8x800 in 3:16, 3:05, 3:09, 3:21, 3:09, 3:05, 3:06, 3:04