Volume Pickups

In previous training cycles I have often seen improvements at various times of training and stagnation at others. In fact, I have come to see this as normal. Training under Mystery Coach's guidance has been a revelation. Not only has my fitness already been better than ever after base training alone, the improvements have kept coming almost on a week-by-week basis.

Thursday and Friday were both easy days. The main issue was that Niamh and the girls took the train to Dublin on Friday morning and I had to drive them to Killarney, which meant either binning the run, shortening it or getting up at 5am.

I got up at 5am. Just like old times.

I was told once that if you get a babysitter for the sole purpose of going for a run, you're completely nuts. They may well have been right. I got a babysitter for both Saturday and Sunday. Yes, running is important to me.

Saturday's run was another one of what has become a routine run by now, 10 miles with 7 at 10 seconds per mile faster than marathon pace, though I have always tried to run by feel, not by pace. The coach's instructions contained two subtle changes, the target pace window got narrowed down from 6:25-6:35 to 6:25-6:30, and I was to try and switch to autopilot rather than pushing the pace.

I am not sure if the coach can predict workouts with incredible precision or if his subtle hints put subliminal messages into my brain that make me do the workout just like he said. This time, just like he said, I managed to switch to autopilot for basically all of the run and still hit the pace. In fact, since the last mile of the speedy part is slightly downhill I slipped out of the target pace window where I had remained for all of the previous miles, but I did not think it was a big deal. Besides, I knew that Sunday's second part of the back-to-back workout would leave me in no doubt. There is no hiding and no way of faking these workouts. If you don't get it right on Saturday you pay the price on Sunday.

Sunday was a new kind of workout altogether. It was originally scheduled for last week but the coach changed it as part of the re-adjustment to stop me from peaking too early. The idea was to alternate running half a mile in 3:12 (6:24 pace, obviously) with a mile at 7:00. There were two surprises: One, that the miles were the more important part of the workout, not the faster half miles. Two, that I should play around with the pace for the half miles, e.g. run the first half faster and the second half slower, or the other way round, or change pace every 200, or whatever I could think of. Just as long as it would not affect the miles.

I pondered where I should run; the Killorglin loop is reasonably flat but there are 3 little climbs and some of the half miles were bound to fall onto those. Eventually I realised the this would not hinder but in fact help alternating the speed and effort during the half miles, and was therefore better suited to that kind of workout than a completely flat course.

Once I got going I found that the pace was no problem whatsoever. What was a problem, one that I had not anticipated at all, was dealing with the constant change of rhythm. It took me half a mile to get into the 6:24 rhythm and as soon as I hit that I had to change pace to 7:00, which felt really awkward. Once I had gotten used to that it was soon time to switch pace again. The Garmin saw some heavy use, I checked it every minute or so and had to change pace a lot to keep within the parameters of the workout, but virtually every time I had to slow down rather than speed up.

After about 4 repeats I finally got used to it, which meant I could start running by feel a bit more, but it had the side effect that I got it wrong on a couple of occasions and a few of the paces were a bit out.

0.5 @ 6:24 pace (HR 157), 1 mile @ 7:01 (HR 153)
0.5 @ 6:18 pace (HR 163), 1 mile @ 6:58 (HR 152)
0.5 @ 6:23 pace (HR 162), 1 mile @ 7:01 (HR 156)
0.5 @ 6:24 pace (HR 167), 1 mile @ 6:53 (HR 162)
0.5 @ 6:25 pace (HR 167), 1 mile @ 6:49 (HR 159)
0.5 @ 6:24 pace (HR 160), 1 mile @ 6:52 (HR 155)
0.5 @ 6:22 pace (HR 165), 1 mile @ 6:55 (HR 163)

As instructed (twice!) I stopped after 7 repeats, but I felt like I could have run a lot more. I was not even tired yet, even with yesterday's run in the legs. Mentally this was doing my head in early on, but physically this was the easiest workout the coach has given me, ever.

24 Mar

10 miles, 1:16:36, 7:39 pace, HR 143

25 Mar

10 miles, 1:16:39, 7:39 pace, HR 140

26 Mar

10 miles, 1:05:53, 6:35 pace, HR 161
   incl. 7 miles at 6:24 pace, HR 164

27 Mar

15 miles, 1:42:44, 6:51 pace, HR 156
   Alternating 0.5 and one mile

Weekly Mileage: 72+ miles