A Workout

The last few days I made sure the mileage would be low, much lower than my usual fare. I was trying to get a bit ahead on recovery and get ready for a workout, following the basic advice that once you move away from base training the hard days should be proper hard and the easy days should be proper easy - a simple enough concept but one I'm finding surprisingly hard to follow at times.

I had not paid much attention to the high HR on the treadmill because that always seems to happen but it was still very much elevated back on the road on Tuesday. Wednesday's numbers looked better already so I, possibly foolishly, decided to finally start running a proper workout the next morning. I vaguely suspected that I might be fighting off an infection, a theory that got some additional weight when the kids started feeling unwell on Thursday and Friday respectively but I wasn't to know that at the time, and personally I felt perfectly fine.

Actually, from the second I decided to do this, I was very much looking forward to it, so mentally at least I was very much ready for it. I did show a bit of caution by cutting the workout down a bit, trying not to completely overwhelm myself. The plan was to do 6 easy miles, with a few strides, followed by 5 or 6 miles at half marathon pace with 1 minute recovery between each mile. For once it was a nice enough morning with very little wind, which made a very nice change and added to my positivity. I felt very good at first and repeatedly had to slow myself down. I still felt good during the first couple of the faster miles, though they were definitely slower than expected. I had ideas of 6:30-6:40 pace but it was about 10 seconds slower. However, I definitely felt that running somewhat relaxed was much more important than hammer out some misguided pace. Alas, the good feeling didn't last and by the time of the fifth repeat it was getting very tough so I skipped the last one. The 3 miles back home were a struggle as it was, so another fast mile would definitely have been a bad mistake. According to Suunto's website, the pace was between 6:39 and 6:53, though I'm absolutely sure the numbers on the watch were a bit faster, something that has happened before. Indeed, the same data on strava has the laps 2 or 3 seconds faster per mile, which I find rather baffling. Obviously it doesn't make any difference to the training effect on my body but my inner maths geek is still hurt by inaccurate numbers.

I was knackered for the rest of the day!

lifted from Liam Smith's FB post

Anyway, I know fully well that someone will utterly disapprove of me running a workout when I could not be sure that I was ready for it. If anything, I wanted to test myself and see how it goes, though if things go badly that would be the equivalent of ripping out your seedlings to see if they had been growing. I ran a very easy recovery run on Friday, feeling a lot better than the day before, not tired and not sore, so maybe I've gotten away with it. I'll see.

10 Feb

8 miles, 1:01:13, 7:39 pace, HR 150

11 Feb

15 miles, 1:54:08, 7:37 pace, HR 152

   incl. 5 x 1 mile @ 6:52, 6:39, 6:42, 6:53, 6:50

12 Feb

5 miles, 41:21, 8:16 pace, HR 140