Following Michael's advice I kept my speed work short and sharp and only did 8x400. By some coincidence, Grellan's latest entry describes a set of 400s as well, and it's interesting to see the differences. For once, he did 10. Secondly, he ran them significantly faster than me; in Daniels' terms, his would have been at R-pace, mine at I-pace. Well, I intentionally held back at each one, running them at my 5K race pace, which equals to 90 seconds per 400, or maybe a second or 2 faster. Even though I didn't check the Garmin while running, that's pretty much the pace I managed to achieve. It was a rather windy day and the repeats kept alternating in and out of the breeze, which is why the even numbered ones were all about 3 seconds faster than the odd ones. With only 8 repeats on the menu, this was over soon enough, whether measured in time or fatigue. Opinions vary wildly, but plenty of people say this is how an interval workout is supposed to be done, at least an I-paced one.
More gardening work didn't help and tired legs led to another easy run on Sunday. I would have loved sleeping in, but at 7:20 Maia walked into our room and rather forcefully demanded breakfast; that was the end of my time in bed. As Niamh later said, just another 16 or so years of that to come.
I might have just complained about my legs, but actually there has been a major improvement this week. The Stick has seen a lot of action, so much so that Niamh commented that I'm sure getting my money's worth out of that thing. Rather than hurting a lot, the legs are now merely stiff from the previous day's training and I finally feel recovered from Connemara and Wexford (which, in hindsight, I should not have raced). With the triathlon coming in a week and the Cork marathon 16 days after that, this may be just in time, but I'm still more than a bit weary about the marathon. I seriously considered pulling out of the race altogether. I had wondered what pace I might be able to achieve, and after Wednesday's run 7:20 seemed optimistic. There will be a pace group going out for 3:15 (7:26 pace), but aiming for a 3:15 marathon seems a bit pointless. It's 10 minutes slower than my PB and I really cannot get excited about this. I feel my only options that seem worthwhile are either to race it and aim for at least 3:10, or jog it to 3:30 and call it a long training run. Anything in-between will take too long to recover from without the chance of providing a satisfactory outcome.
Anyway, let's move on. I also measured my resting HR today. I did the same last week and was shocked to see an inability of my heart to go under 49 beats. That's incredibly high for me. Luckily, my fears were somewhat allayed this morning with a reading of 40, and that coming a day after intervals which probably caused a slightly raised reading. As I've said, I've seen some real improvement this week.
Oh, and I did another open water swim in the sea today. I hope I'll be able to cope next Saturday.
- 14 May
- 6.1 miles, 49:44, 8:09 pace, HR 145
- 15 May
- 7.1 miles, 51:12, 7:12 pace, HR 160
incl. 8X400 @ 88, 86, 89, 86, 91, 87, 87, 85 - 16 May
- am: 6.1 miles, 50:10, 8:13 pace, HR 138
pm: 20 minutes OWS
Wait until the last week before deciding. You could come good enough to go close to the PB (3:07-8).
ReplyDeleteIf one has time in the training week to do both kinds of intervals, then do both. If not, then the 5-10k race-pace 400s with short recoveries is efficient. Nate Jenkins ran a 1500 PB off a diet of those type of intervals.