Two more Workouts

The holidays have slightly messed up my schedule, but with a little bit of good will I can work around that. The biggest annoyance is the commute this week, it takes almost an hour each way to get from door to door, and obviously cycling to work is out of the question. I also found that I’m too tired to do my usual strengthening exercises in the evening – not a problem for a week or two, as long as I pick up the slack again next week.

Anyway, Niamh dropped me off to work on Monday morning, I ran home to Caragh Lake in the evening, cycled into work on Tuesday morning and got picked up by Niamh again in the evening. That way I could get some extra sleep on Tuesday, and Niamh had the car for those two days; otherwise she and the kids would have been more or less confined to the house (which they are now, for the rest of the week). I jiggled around my schedules and did my long run on Tuesday, which meant getting up at 5:20 (it would have been well before 5am had I slept in Valentia). The plan was to run 11 miles at steady pace, 6 miles at marathon pace and one last mile at half marathon pace. I noticed early on that the legs felt quite sluggish. Steady pace should be around 8:00 for me, but again and again I found myself slacking off and dropping down to 8:30. I did try and pick it up a bit and by mile 11 put the accelerator down. The next question was, what should marathon pace be? Following the book’s charts, it should be 6:40 according to my 5k time. The pace I need to beat 3 hours in Dublin is 6:52. I thought I would do well to run 7:00, and that’s what I initially aimed for. To my dismay, the legs would not follow. After about two miles the average pace was around 7:10, the legs seemed to work as hard as they could, but a look at the HRM told me that at 150 bpm I should be able to run a good bit faster. I also felt far too comfortable (apart from the legs, that is). I tried to pick it up a few times, which certainly increased the heart rate but did not do much for the pace. Worse was to come at the turnaround point, when I realised that I had been running with the wind on my back; the return leg would not only be slightly uphill but also against the wind. Of course the pace dropped after that. In the end I ended up with 7:12 pace for that segment. I put all I had into the last mile, and managed to squeeze out a 6:41 mile; then I was well and truly finished.

I did rationalise afterwards; I had run more than 20 miles on Friday and more than 15 on Sunday, both of them hilly. No wonder the legs felt dead on Tuesday. I’ll try and get some more rest for future workouts; as I’ve said the holidays have messed up my schedule. A return to my normal week might bring some sanity back to my training.

I made sure to take it really easy on Wednesday. I even cut a mile off the intended mileage, to ensure that I would have plenty of time and would not feel the need to speed up to get to work on time.

I started a new training phase this week, which replaces the 400s with 1000s and the mile repeats with tempo runs. I did 4x1000 today. According to the book the intended pace was my 5k pace, 5:55, which translates into about 3:41 for a km, but after the humbling experience of last week’s mile repeats I did not expect to hit that pace. The legs felt very sluggish initially; maybe this was because I had not run a fast workout for a week, but somehow I doubt it. Anyway, my times for the 4 repeats were 3:49, 3:46, 3:42 and 3:41. I’m pretty sure I have never done a repeat session where I managed to speed up with every interval, not that I’m complaining. In the end I even managed to hit the prescribed pace, which was rather pleasing. All in all I’m happy enough with that workout. I think the 3 minutes recovery interval helped a lot, compared to the 2 minutes I was given for the mile repeats. This made a massive difference. Maybe I would have been better off with the longer breaks for the mile repeats as well, but that’s something to think about for the next training cycle.

19 Aug

18 miles, 2:19:53, 7:46 pace, HR 144
miles 11-17 @ 7:12, mile 17-18 @ 6:41

20 Aug

7 miles, 1:00:18, 8:37 pace, HR 134

21 Aug

7 miles, 54:53, 7:50 pace, HR 151
4x1000 in 3:49, 3:46, 3:42, 3:41