Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Impatience and speed

Yesterday's (Monday) lunchtime run was scheduled to be 6 miles 'easy'. It started well enough with Miles 1 & 2 on pace (7:08 and 7:13 respectively) but I got a fit of madness over miles 3 and 4 which I covered in 6:35 and 6:10. Some sense prevailed in mile 5 which I covered in 7:03 largely due to a 100m jog at the end of mile 4. But impatience got the better of me again over the last 0.94mile which I covered in 6:07 (6:32 min/mile pace). The 'easy' run turned into a 'tempo' / interval type run but overall not a bad run and I felt good even though yesterdays 16miler was still in my legs!!
Unsurprisingly my legs felt 'sluggish' this morning (Tuesday) but I stuck to my plan which was to generally repeat an interval session that I had last done on 26 August. In August I completed 7 reps of the 0.3mile grass circuit but today I decided to complete only 6 reps at a slightly quicker pace (sub 1:30) and with a shorter recovery recovery (1:30). The primary aim was to be consistent in each rep. The following is a comparison of the 2 sessions with the August session shown in brackets.

Stage - Distance (mile)- Time (min) - Pace (min/mile) - Avg bpm - Recovery (min)
Warm up - 1.11 (1.13) - 7:50 (8.31) - 7:03 - 140 (139) - N/A
Lap 1 - 0.30 - 1:26 (1:52) - 4:54 - 148 (142) - 1:32 (1:31)
Lap 2 - 0.30 - 1:26 (1:32) - 4:46 - 156 (147) - 1:24 (1:37)
Lap 3 - 0.31 - 1:27 (1:27) - 4:45 - 159 (150) - 1:32 (1:39)
Lap 4 - 0.30 - 1:27 (1:30) - 4:49 - 158 (154) - 1:40 (1:36)
Lap 5 - 0.30 - 1:27 (1:29) - 4:53 - 161 (154) - 1:37 (1:44)
Lap 6 - 0.31 - 1:26 (1:28) - 4:43 - 163 (156) - N/A (1:53)
Lap 7 - 0.00 - 0:00 (1:27) - 0:00 - 000 (159) - N/A
Warm down - 1.14 (1.12) - 9:02 (9:12) - 7:55 - 157 (158)

As you can see today's session compares very favourably with the August session. My lap and recovery sets were consistently quicker and much more repeatable. Obviously the training is doing some good!! My heart rate was slightly higher than previously but I put this down to the shorter recovery. Mondays unplanned 'tempo' session may also have been a contributing factor. Still all-in-all a satisfying session. Interestingly my left quad began to cramp on the warm down today probably due to lactic build up (?).

Also I think I'd better start introducing some strengthening exercises into my weekly plan if I want to improve my mile pace. I'd like to run sub 5mins some time next year. Mike mentioned this in his comment to my previous blog and I think he's got a point. Today's pace certainly felt like it was the quickest I could sustain for the session and I certainly felt that I could do with some increased leg strength in order to gain those precious seconds...

4 comments:

Mike said...

Nice work!

Certainly I'm no expert in regards to training, but what I've found the strength training does for me is it allows me to handle tougher and/or larger workloads with less fatigue/soreness afterwards.

I'm not sure exactly how much the lifting adds to the speed per se, but by allowing me to handle things like plyometrics, aggressive hill repeats, and actual speed/sprint work, it gives me a base or a foundation to build speed down the line.

Thomas said...

Bloody hell, what's your easy pace??? My easy runs are at about 8:00 pace. What you did would definitely be a tempo run for me.

Grellan said...

I'm with Thomas. 7:xx is not "easy". You're definitely a bit of a speed junkie.

bricey said...

Guys,

Now you know why I don't like racing over anything longer than 5 miles!!! Imagine if I had to keep my speed deamons in check for a full 26miles - I'd never last the distance!! :)

Seriously though, McMillan has my 'easy' pace at 7:22 to 7:52 based on my 5k time and 7:35 to 8:05 based on my 10 mile Ballycotton time. However, I tend to think (feel) that I'm running 'slow' if I'm doing anything over 7:15. Maybe it's that I'm coming from the short/middle distance background and maturing in to longer distance runner rather than vice versa!!

BTW 'tempo' runs for me are anything from 6:14 - 6:43 pace.