Relativity

To ensure recovery after the weekend’s tough back-to-back workouts I decided to take 2 easy days in a row. 8 miles on Monday left me in a reasonably good shape, but I really appreciated the 10 easy ones on Tuesday; I felt really good. What is noticeable is that I ran with a lower HR on Tuesday than Monday even though the pace was higher (effort was just as easy), I guess that’s what we are talking about when we're talking about recovery.

That left me in a fresh state for Wednesday. I re-checked the Canova docs/websites I'm using to get a handle on the system and read that you are still supposed to be doing some of the workouts from the earlier training phase, so I decided that another fartlek was in order. I haven’t done one of those in a few weeks.

I opted for the slightly longer version of 25 x 1 minute hard, 1 minute easy. Obviously, if you use only the watch to determine the workout then the effort you are prepared to put into the workout will determine how hard it is and how tired you will be at the end. I can honestly say that I must have been putting in plenty of effort because by the end I was suitably knackered. I never checked the watch but I'm reasonably confident that all the fast bits were at higher-than-5k effort, which means it all adds up to a significant amount of hard running, far more than in a 5k race.

It’s amazing how long a minute can be when you’re running hard, especially when that segments coincides with a climb, and even more so if it’s into a headwind. On the other side, I never knew a minute can pass by so quickly. Einstein was obviously right, time is not a constant.

With the legs suitably sore again, I’m once more looking at two recovery days before the weekend back-to-back runs.

14 Jan

8 miles, 1:01:07, 7:38 pace, HR 141

15 Jan

10 miles, 1:15:04, 7:30 pace, HR 138

16 Jan

9.2 miles, 1:08:09, 7:24 pace, HR 155
    25 x 1 min hard, 1 min easy