Thursday, November 07, 2013

Revving Up Just A Little

The next event in Sixmilebridge is only 10 days away, so I do not have much of a window to do some "proper" training. I'm not entirely sure how much damage the Dublin marathon has done to my legs, but I keep checking my heart rate / pace ratio and for the last 3 days I had been in the "neutral" zone, neither too high nor too low, so I thought it safe enough to run just a little bit faster today (Thursday) morning after a long series of easy recovery runs.

The last faster run before Dublin had been 8 miles at roughly 3:10 marathon pace (which had served as a neat test for Dublin), though the heart rate (154) had been a little bit higher than I would have liked. Today's plan was to run at about HR 150 and see where that leaves me.

It was raining heavily when I left but it stopped after only half a mile, though by then I was already soaked right through. Ah well. I felt pretty good during the first two warm up miles and then accelerated to the effort that felt appropriate. At first I had troubles getting my HR up, but I was also running with the wind on my back and I knew it would feel much tougher on the way back home. This turned out to be absolutely correct. I found it really hard to keep the HR at one level and the blustery wind sure did not help. In the end I averaged 151 over those 8 miles, which was surprisingly close to target (I had expected the number to be higher) but in reality it had been 8 miles with the HR fluctuating between 145 and 155 and the effort being rather uneven as well. On the plus side, the legs felt very well and I could have kept going for much, much longer while the pace was actually faster than at that run before Dublin.

The rule that I set last month, namely that every workout, even a rather modest one like today's, will always be followed by two recovery days and which has served me very well, helping me to get out of my overtraining hole, will of course still apply.

5 Nov
8 miles, 1:02:32, 7:48 pace, HR 144
6 Nov
8 miles, 1:03:03, 7:52 pace, HR 139
7 Nov
10 miles, 1:12:53, 7:17 pace, HR 149
   incl. 8 miles @ 7:07 pace (HR 151)

1 comment:

  1. This insight is so good that I hope everyone who reads it, writes it down in a place where they can review it everyday

    "The rule that I set last month, namely that every workout, even a rather modest one like today's, will always be followed by two recovery days and which has served me very well, helping me to get out of my over training hole, will of course still apply"

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