I knew I needed a bit of recovery after the weekend so I only ran 8 miles on Monday, as has become the norm, and I made absolutely sure I kept the effort down. What I did not expect was to end up with a heart rate of well below 140 and yet a pace of faster than 8:00. At that point I thought I’d finally cracked this endurance training thingamajig.
As I’ve been doing an evaluation workout every second Tuesday, this would have been the time again. But for some reason I thought it would be better to add one more recovery day, do the evaluation on Wednesday and then take it easy for 2 days before the race. It seemed to make sense at one point.
I was being good for 9.75 miles of Tuesday’s run and then I decided to be naughty and sprinted home just for the fun of it. A quarter mile of sprinting can’t do any harm. Can it?
I’m inclined not to blame that quarter mile for today’s figures, but don’t know what to blame instead. Working too hard over the weekend? Maybe, but then why did I not feel tired at any point? Anyway, it’s fair to say that I expected a certain set of numbers from today’s evaluation and ended up with an entirely different one. I suppose that’s why I run these evaluations; they take away the guessing and replace it with cold, hard numbers. Compare them with last time:
Date 28 Jun 13 Jul
Mile 1 6:55 7:11
Mile 2 7:03 7:11
Mile 3 7:06 7:17
Mile 4 6:57 7:20
Time to 130 32 50
The 50 seconds recovery time is especially shocking. Maybe it’s all down to the fact that it was a very humid morning? I noticed my soaking wet top sticking to me on the way home, clearly displaying the contours of my upper body for all my excited female fans out there to see (of which there are zero, sadly).
Whatever. I’ll do what I would have done anyway and take it easy for 2 days and on Saturday I’ll race 15 miles, totally cheating because the course drops by over 200 meters over the first half. Grellan will be there to provide some friendly competition, but if I can’t beat a guy who is still recovering from a 100k I’ll stop running and start collecting stamps instead.
- 11 Jul
- 8 miles, 1:03:11, 7:54 pace, HR 135
- 12 Jul
- 10 miles, 1:16:49, 7:41 pace, HR 144
- 13 Jul
- 11.8 miles, 1:26:47, 7:21 pace, HR 156
incl. 4 miles evaluation (rec. 00:50)
I shouldn't be too much of a challenge as i'm racing on Friday night also - my shortest race yet - 100m!
ReplyDeleteAs someone who runs in rediculous heat and humidity during the summer, I can vouch for a much higher heart rate and longer recovery time when running in those conditions.
ReplyDeleteYou'll be just fine!
As heart rate is affected by many different things; temperature -heat or cold, adrenaline,even ones natural biorhythms I'm not sure you can really take much from your test results, interesting yes but more important is how you feel!
ReplyDeleteIf Grellan beats the living daylights out of you will your blog become 'Diary of a rubbish stamp collector! p.s. Marius Bakken did much testing of heart rates and lactate levels and found that from day to day heart rate could raise or lower by as much as 10 bpm for the same speed!
Rick,
ReplyDeleteI think you are misinterpreting the intent of the evaluation runs. They show how well you are recovering and what type of recovery is needed.
Let's look at Thomas' results:
Date 28 Jun 13 Jul
Mile 1 6:55 7:11
Mile 2 7:03 7:11
Mile 3 7:06 7:17
Mile 4 6:57 7:20
Time to 130 32 50
As you pointed out heart rate pace relationships can vary from day to day (Both Peter Janssen and Marius Bakken have extensive data on this). Looking at the above results indicates that Thomas had reached a point of general fatigue. The the HR/pace is stable but slower as is the recovery. Thomas' condition did not vanish over two weeks but he did wear himself down a bit (He got a note from me taking him to task for wasting his good condition on hard training efforts instead of racing hard).
During the racing season specific fatigue can be identified by a big drop off in miles 3 and 4 (you might see 7:35, 7:50) indicating to much or too hard speed sessions (or maybe too many races in a short time period). This type of fatigue is harder to recover from but as long as you catch it early (cut out the speed ) you'll still race well. The evealuation runs just show you where you are and what is needed to get to you next step.