What has felt sore over the last few days is my midriff. I did a few core strengthening exercise on Saturday, and felt perfectly fine afterwards and on Sunday. Then I stupidly decided to do a few push-ups on Sunday evening, and within two or three of those my stomach muscles felt sore. They’re still uncomfortable today, which is weird because up to Sunday evening I had not felt a twinge. I don’t think I pulled something, it feels just like fatigued muscles do. The main thing for me is that it does not seem to interfere with running, and I can live with the rest.
I went to bed rather early last night, and after reading for almost an hour quickly fell asleep. When I woke at 2 am I did not think much of it, and expected to be able to fall back sleep promptly. Nope. At about 3 am I started reading again, and after several unsuccessful attempts at snoozing, did so until 5. I managed about half an hour of sleep after that, and then I was staring at the ceiling until I got up. This had been happening a lot lately, though not quite from 2 am usually. Maybe if I upped my mileage back to 100 mpw it would knock me out sufficiently to sleep thorough the night again like I used to?
I know full and well that this is turning into a weekly whinge-fest, but those hill repeats are well and truly kicking my backside. Running 75 seconds up a hill of 8-10% grade at 1-mile pace? I don’t think so. And repeating it 8 times? Nope. Not me. I gave it my best shot, but it was s-l-o-w. I checked my times and paces afterwards, and noticed a weird pattern. The first five repeats were all at more or less the same pace, then there was a slowdown of almost 20 seconds per mile on the sixth, which is the pace I kept for the last two repeats as well. There was no drop in effort, I can assure you, but the pace dropped a level all of a sudden. I haven’t really seen anything like that before. Anyway, after 8 hill repeats I was ready to crawl back home, but seemed to recover within a couple minutes. Usually I feel dead on my feet after those repeats, today I was basically cruising home. My first thought was that I had not run the repeats hard enough, but with the heart rate crossing over 180 on each of them I don’t think I could have worked much harder.
I do have some doubts if those lactic acid inducing repeats are such a good idea. It’s still almost 16 weeks until the marathon, and anaerobic workouts at that stage might well be counter-productive. However, I’m committed to the program, and will see it through until the race. The way I see it, the last few years of high mileage were my base building phase, now I’m trying to move on to the next stage. Ok, I admit it, that’s wishful thinking.
- 7 Jul
- 7 miles, 55:40, 7:57 pace, HR 142
- 8 Jul
- 7.2 miles, 1:02:47, 8:43 pace. HR 148
incl. 8x75 secs hill repeats with 2:30 rest
It's a good sign to see your easy pace dropping along with a lower hr. Those hill sprints sound wicked.
ReplyDeletehaving done hill reps for many years I can tell you they never get any easier!
ReplyDeleteI use to do a session of 20 x 150m with my friend Steve james who went on to break the world 5k track record for v 60's.
i think you are just slowing because of lactic acid build up, with time your body will get more efficient and you should be able to complete the full set at around the same pace!
my friend Steve rates hill sessions for developing a good running style! enjoy
I had the exact same experience with my "Brain Training" Hill sprints - pace, which was never near 1 mile pace, dropped off from rep 5. What type of hill work were you doing under the Lyiard training?
ReplyDelete