Talking about old age, right now I can feel every one of my 41 years weighing heavily on me, due to this morning’s hill repeats. After two easy days on Monday and Tuesday, the first one an awkward stumble on heavy legs, the second one a beautiful effortless glide along the road (with a pace of 5 secs per mile faster and an HR of 4 bpm lower than the day before – figure that one out), it was once more time to get serious.
The coach offered me 2 options, either another set of 800s like last week or a set of 90 second hill repeats, depending on what I felt like. The second I read this I felt much more like hill repeats and the mood had not changed by 5:50 am this morning. This was 20 minutes earlier than usual, due to a certain 3-year old demanding food. She completely refused all offers of fruit or yoghurt until I gave in and made her breakfast. I don’t know why I even tried arguing. She’s so much better at arguing than me it really is no contest.
Anyway, after making sure she was fed and happy, I was off. After a long warm-up I approached the dirt road leading into Coillte Forest Park Caragh Lake, which is my standard hill repeats road. The coach had mentioned something about marathon pace or slightly slower, and within 30 seconds I had learned two more lessons.
One, when running up a road of (estimated) 8 percent gradient, you don’t do marathon pace. Slightly slower is what I should have aimed for.
Two, if I had chosen hill repeats over 800s in order to get the easier option, I had just been suckered into the wrong one. Again.
Partially due to me initially taking off like a lunatic, this turned into a 5x90 seconds of torture session. Well, I exaggerate, the first 30 seconds each were reasonable; it’s just the 60 seconds thereafter that formed the torture, enough to raise the HR from about 130 well into the 170s each time. Rest consisted of jogging down very slowly, which took about 2 minutes, apart from the third one when I stopped to get a stone out of my shoe that had started to dig into my heel. Maybe I should have left it there, just to provide a counter-pain to the quads that increasingly felt like being filled with battery acid.
I should learn to read the coach’s clues. When he says things like “Watch your legs on these because they can sneak up on you quickly leg fatigue wise”, he really means it.
Cycling into work with fried quads was another, unexpected, extension of the joys of today’s workout.
Actually, once the immediate session is over I quite like the feeling of sore legs. It tells me that I'm working hard enough to improve. Then again, that exactly used to be the very problem that caused me not to improve. It was running easily at all times during base training that caused me to improve this time round, but base training feels like a long time ago, right now.
Anyway, the taper is not far off.
- 21 Mar
- 8 miles, 1:02:18, 7:47 pace, HR 142
- 22 Mar
- 10 miles, 1:17:04, 7:42 pace, HR 139
- 23 Mar
- 9+ miles, 1:12:26, 7:55 pace, HR 144
incl. 5x90 seconds hill repeats
Great session Thomas, all signs point to you really coming into your own. That said, in all my years I don’t recall ever reading or hearing a coach prescribe hill repeats so close to a marathon. If you have a moment, get MC to describe the rational between 800s vs. hill repeats?
ReplyDeleteHigh quality workout Thomas! P.S. Glad you ajusted to concise style of DM reports.
ReplyDeleteAmazing how quickly the weeks are rolling around, soon be marathon time again!
ReplyDeleteCan't say my quads hurt running uphill only down!
You might have to explain to Ewen what Facebook is, after all he's such a crusty old devil:]
Michael, I don't know the answer, but I can ask. He left me with 2 options and told me to pick one, depending how I felt in the morning.
ReplyDeleteAll I can say is that my progress under his guidance has been nothing short of spectacular.
Rick, maybe someone should explain it to me first before I can tell Ewen about it.
I'm another facebook account holder who's never usaed it - not even for dailymiles. I alway thought hill repeats were an early introduction to speedwork following basetraining.
ReplyDeleteBTW did MC make changes to your training to prevent the likelihood of peaking too early, following his concern about your "effortless" run 2 weeks ago.
Grellan, yes, we delayed last week's speedwork for a day until the HR was back to more normal levels. We would have waited longer if it had stayed there but that turned out not to be necessary. He also postponed the originally planned workout for last weekend, I'll do it this weekend instead.
ReplyDeleteBasically, he made me do more easy runs than scheduled for a few days.
I have an idea. Don't keep track of your daily miles...work as hard as you can...week in and week out...then use bench mark workouts to check in on your fitness. Run far when you have time and feel like it...run fast when you feel fresh and feel the need for speed. Less numbers...more feel.
ReplyDeleteYou're recovering well (fried quads aside) from the workouts so that's a good sign.
ReplyDeleteI think FB is best for the 'look at me' generation, although it's handy for some things. My tip would be to get on Twitter and learn that instead of FB. Follow anyone you want and get some good tips and links.
I am not on Facebook either and, like you, I'm wondering what the big deal is all about. Also, turn down that rock n' roll.
ReplyDelete