Working Through Recovery

My honest opinion is you are digging that hole again Thomas, why the hell you did that hill workout and what i consider a heavy week post a full hard marathon i do not know

Thanks for your comment, Keith.

The reason I ran up a hill on Saturday is that I always felt I recover very quickly from those kind of runs, much faster than from a road workout, which is exactly what I wanted. As for digging myself into a hole, I sure have previous on that so I definitely won't dismiss it. But right now I'm trusting my coach not to let that happen. One thing that speaks against the hole theory is that my numbers are improving rapidly again, getting close to the best numbers I have posted in this training cycle. In contrast, last autumn they were consistently dire.

I did a couple of easy runs at the start of the week, in fact we added one extra easy day compared to the original schedule. They both went well and the numbers looked pretty damn good, though I can still feel some tightness in my glutes, which I think is still a residue of the marathon (hills I would expect to affect mostly the calves (uphill) or quads (downhill)).

On Wednesday morning I had the next workout on the program. I ran this in the park close to home, not during a commute. On the plan was laps in the park, fast laps alternating with jogging laps.

I did 1 mile of warm up and needed the first 2 fast laps to feel fully warmed up. I kept feeling a bit slow all the while but tried to concentrate on turning over the legs quickly rather than work myself into the ground. My glutes still felt tight but didn’t get any worse as the miles kept ticking by very quickly.

6:48, 6:46, 6:35, 6:33, 6:40, 6:40, 6:37 - 6:40, 6:42, 6:42 - 6:33, 6:20, 6:23 (6:37 avg)

I tried to increase the pace after 7 but it doesn’t show up in the numbers. I upped the effort once more after 10, which DID show some improvements. Throughout the workout I felt I just could not go any faster but I always felt that I could run plenty more of those laps, so I added a 13th one at the end (the plan had been 12), partially to make up for what I perceived as slow pace, partially because I had plenty left in the tank (indeed, I still could have gone on for at least one more).

Normally I would have balked at the idea of 31 laps in the local park, but alternating fast and slow laps made this surprisingly easy to bear.  Looking at my race history you might think that running little loops for hours would be something I like doing but in fact I usually hate it in a training run. It is entirely different in a race setting, though.

The cool down lasted until I had done 15 miles. Right at the end I finally started to feel tired, which may have been more in the head than the legs. Oh, and somehow I had managed to misplace my HRM chest strap since yesterday and haven't got any HR data for that workout. Ah well.

12 Jun

5.5 miles, 45:35, 8:17 pace, HR 137

13 Jun

5.5 miles, 43:29, 7:54 pace, HR 137

14 Jun

15 miles, 1:57:26, 7:49 pace

   13 half miles @ 6:37 pace avg.