Thursday, September 20, 2012

That Day Again

18th September was the day this year. I ran in the morning, as I always do, and my hands felt freezing cold. For me, that one occasion always marks the end of summer. Accordingly I wore gloves yesterday and today. I also noticed that it's still dark when I leave the house. Not dark enough for a headlamp, but enough to don the reflective gear. Now it's time to HTFU and get used to the dark and the cold and the freezing cold rain in the dark.

Actually, Niamh was amazed when I turned on the heating that evening. Usually we play that game, she turns the heating on, I turn it off, she turns it on again and so on until one of us gives up (usually me). Apparently we have different body temperature gauges. But on Tuesday it was me who turned it on. There's a first for everything. Maybe it's a sign that I'm getting old.

Darker mornings usually mean that the Dublin marathon is getting close. In years past this would have meant the training for my "A" event would be reaching its peak, but these days Dublin is just a long training run combined with a social outing, both friends and family-wise.

I have increased the mileage a little bit this week, running 8 miles both Tuesday and Wednesday, but yesterday's HR was a bit higher than I would have liked to see, so I cut today's run down to 5 miles, only to see today's HR just as high but at a slower pace. The effort level for all these runs has been pretty much the same. I don't ever check the Garmin, just turn it on at the start and press the stop button at the end. Tuesday was even more telling, I took my first step, noticed the cold temperatures and pretty much the next thing I remembered was that I had just completed 8 miles entirely on autopilot, despite the freezing hands.

I have read a few things about Renato Canova's training recently. Of course he is training the super elites in Kenya, not some hobby runner, but there are plenty of online articles and forum discussions (some even with the man's input) that translate that kind of training for the non-elite runner. I do think, however, that I do not know nearly enough about this training to do it unsupervised, but I am tempted to incorporate a few things into my training while still staying true to the Lydiard training I am familiar with. More runs, including long ones, at close to marathon pace, regular hill sprints as well as runs where you alternate faster than MP segments with recovery segments that are only a little bit slower - interestingly, Mystery Coach had me do a few of these sessions, and he still called it Lydiard training, so I do think the training concepts are somewhat compatible.
18 Sep
8 miles, 1:01:20, 07:40 pace, HR 148
19 Sep
8 miles, 1:00:52, 07:36 pace, HR 151
20 Sep
5 miles, 38:34, 07:42 pace, HR 151

4 comments:

  1. I like reading up on Canova's training ideas too.

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  2. Over here it is the opposite and I leave the gloves at home now. Spring is here!

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  3. It's not that you're getting old it's just that you don't have enough insulation. You need to keep eating crap for a few more weeks yet.

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  4. T-shirt weather down here the past few days. Still coolish though with the temp range from about 5 to a max of 22 or so.

    I've got a lot of time for Canova. Some of the pro sessions are intimidating though, like 4 x 6k at HM pace with 1k recoveries at 3:20/k. But I guess Lydiard's boys were doing similar things but minus the precise timing.

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