Thursday, May 19, 2016

Hills And Recovery

After the heavy training block of 3 (almost) marathons on 3 consecutive weekends, right now I am in recovery mode. Results are somewhat mixed. On Wednesday morning I was really pleased with how the legs felt and thought that recovery was going exceptionally well. Thursday morning things looked a lot bleaker again with heavy legs and feeling a bit tired. I’ve had similar ups and downs in previous weeks as well, so this is nothing new. With no marathon this weekend to mess things up again I should soon be okay again.

My heart rate/pace data is looking reasonably good considering what I have subjected myself to in the last few weeks. The idea was always to overreach a bit but still be able to recover in a reasonable timeframe. So far I think this is going pretty well.

I have done a couple of evening runs as well, and like in previous weeks I did them on the treadmill. There are two reasons for that. First, I don’t like running on our windy roads with all that traffic. It’s not exactly busy but in the morning I usually see maybe 2 or 3 cars in an hour; in the evenings it’s closer to a car a minute or two. That’s not exactly a major highway, I’m perfectly aware of that, but it is a lot more traffic than I am comfortable with. The second reason is that the treadmill makes it easy to keep the effort at an exceptionally easy level. I always found it hard to run easily in the evenings – the subjective effort was always a bit off compared to morning runs and I always tended to run faster than planned. On the treadmill that is easily avoided, the only drawback being my daughter’s disapproval for being disturbed in her Netflix binge viewing.

The nice weather seems to have gone again after that gorgeous weekend we’ve just had, but even that comes with a major plus: all of a sudden the cloud of blood sucking midges that has repeatedly disrupted my S&C morning workout has gone. That alone is almost worth the rain, though I strongly suspect I won’t find much agreement on that point.

I decided to do some kind of workout this morning, though one with very little hard running: hill sprints. They always work the same: a good, long warm up and and then a few hill sprints that last about 15 seconds, followed by walking down the hill and a short jog at the bottom before the next sprint. Each circuit takes about 80 seconds, though I certainly don't time them. After a few sprints I always start getting a tight chest and get hit by a wave of nausea, maybe 20 seconds after the sprint, and once that starts getting seriously uncomfortable I go home.

The legs tend to hurt for the rest of the day after such a workout but will be fine again the next morning.

16 May
5 miles, 43:21, 8:40 pace, HR 132
17 May
am: 5 miles, 39:37, 7:55 pace, HR 142
pm: 3 miles, 25:05, 8:22 pace, HR 124
18 May
am: 8 miles, 1:02:08, 7:46 pace, HR 142
pm: 4 miles, 33:07, 8:17 pace, HR 132
19 May
7 miles, 1:03:35, 9:05 pace, HR 137, 12 hill sprints

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