Lost in La La Land

I am trying, I really am. Last year I went through Mystery Coach’s training cycle, trying to learn as much as I can, getting an understanding of the method so that I would be able to do it again on my own. The next step now is to actually do it in contrast to knowing in theory what I should be doing and then do something different altogether (umm, I’ve said that before, haven’t I?).

He drilled it into me time and time again, recovery, recovery, recovery, that’s what the base phase is all about. Run easy at all times, let the pace come down naturally, never push the effort, fill up your energy reserves for the peak phase when you DO work hard.

I had been good on Monday and Tuesday (not that I had much of a choice on tired legs), and I continued being good on Wednesday and Thursday, when I did 10 slow miles each, along Caragh Lake in absolutely lousy conditions with enough wind and rain that you wouldn’t keep a dog outside (actually, people still do).

I had just reached that point where I was really pleased about myself, running at the right effort level, holding back every day, not digging myself into yet another hole when Friday came along and I had to bring the whole house of cards crashing down again. Friday is the one day where I can put in a little more effort; I see it as reward for holding back six days a week. The most important word in the previous sentence, however, was “little”. That’s where I went wrong.

Of course the legs felt good after four easy days in a row. I never looked at the Garmin, never even contemplated looking at it as I was cruising along on autopilot, the mind somewhere in La La Land, just automatically tuning into the correct effort. Or so I thought. The first time I actually looked at the Garmin was when I pressed the “Stop” button back home, immediately realising that I had run much too fast, again. Oops. I thought I’d stopped doing that.

Sure, it’s cool to be hitting sub-3 marathon pace over 10 miles while cruising on autopilot, but now’s not the time to do so. As I’ve said before, this time round I'm learning how not to do MC’s training plan. I’m still hopeful this will be a sufficiently powerful lesson for the winter, when I actually want to train for real.

6 Jul

10 miles, 1:18:00, 7:48 pace, HR 142

7 Jul

10 miles, 1:17:50, 7:47 pace, HR 143

8 Jul

10 miles, 1:08:42, 6:52 pace, HR 159