A Slow Journey to Faster Times

AuldManKing wrote: »

Just seen your 5k time - that's an amazing performance!
Well deserved though.






B'Stard.

I knew you'd be pleased :pac:

Tuesday 19th August (Day 16/56) - 10m (with 6 x 1,000m @ VO2Max)

2.5m warm-up

6 x 1,000m splits (with 2:00min recovery)

1 - 3:27
2 - 3:26
3 - 3:25
4 - 3:26
5 - 3:26
6 - 3:26

2.75m cool down

After my new 5k PB on Saturday, I needed to adjust the target splits for this session to 3:27min/km. Before I hit the road this morning, I foolishly had myself believing this would be comfortable having strung 5k together in a row at that pace on Saturday. Surely it would be easy running 6 x 1k intervals with recoveries in between? I even reduced the recoveries I had taken in the same session while training for Seville (2:30>2:00mins). How wrong I was! This was very, very, very difficult. I actually can't believe I ran at that pace last Saturday after this morning . The first interval felt ok, but I knew starting the second one that reducing the recovery time had been a mistake. It was too late to start again now though . Managed to hold the pace through that and the next two a little easier than expected. However the fifth & sixth were extremely painful. I needed to walk the recoveries after both of those while trying not to vomit at the same time. I was four seconds down on the last one with 200m to go, but couldn't allow myself to miss that having hit the others, so put everything I had left in the tank into hitting that and clawed it back to 3:26 . Delighted with the session and happy with my decision to run on empty this morning, as I think my breakfast would be all over Clontarf promenade now if I'd eaten any!

Two thoughts for the day, one of which myself & Ferris B were discussing on our long run last week:

1. Training is not supposed to be easy
2. What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger (can also be applied to life in general)

I survived this morning and although I've got a lot of miles to cover in the next seven days, Longford is my next hard effort. Looking forward to that, although I'm not relishing the VO2 Max session (5 x 1200m) in a fortnight's time :eek:.

Wednesday 20th August (Day 17/56) - 16m Med/Long
16 miles @ 7:55p/m average

Since my next scheduled rest day is not for another six days, I took a dublin runner style 'fake day off' with almost 36 hours between yesterday's session and today's. However it was more by necessity than design due to my working hours. I was feeling very tired & sore before I got under way and decided just to get this one done without worrying too much about the pace. Once I kept below 8 minute miles I'd be happy. Since I wasn't concentrating too much about the speed of the run, I needed something else to focus my mind on. After reading the thread about people who draw things when they run, I decided to try something out myself. This is for all visitors to Dublin who might get lost from time to time: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/569921497 :pac:. This was only supposed to be a 15 mile run, but I ended up doing 16 as I miscalculated where I'd finish. When I did finish (after some stretches), I amazingly felt much less sore than when I started. I don't feel tired now but I'm sure I'll sleep well tonight!


Splits:

Mile 1 - 7:56
Mile 2 - 7:59
Mile 3 - 7:58
Mile 4 - 8:04
Mile 5 - 7:54
Mile 6 - 8:01
Mile 7 - 7:57
Mile 8 - 7:57
Mile 9 - 7:49
Mile 10 - 7:46
Mile 11 - 7:55
Mile 12 - 7:55
Mile 13 - 7:42
Mile 14 - 7:51
Mile 15 - 7:54
Mile 16 - 7:58

Saturday 23rd August (Day 20/56) - 5m Recovery
5 miles @ 8:27p/m average

A few easy miles before work.


Splits:

Mile 1 - 8:26
Mile 2 - 8:31
Mile 3 - 8:39
Mile 4 - 8:19
Mile 5 - 8:19

Best of luck to all in the FD10 this morning!