Wednesday, September 3, 2008

It's not the heat, it's the . . NO it's the damn heat!!

Temperature at the track today . . .  98 degrees.  Man, last night I went out at about 6:30 pm to do my evening run and the temp was "only" 82 degrees.  I felt like I was running on a late Fall day.  It almost felt cold!  I guess that's what consistent temps up around triple digits can do to you.  

Today's festivities included going to the track for my up-tempo day.  Most of these days are going to be threshold running, but being that my reps have primarily been in the 400m-600m range (w/ one 800m day) I decided to do some longer reps today before getting more into the threshold work - 1000m repeats, @ 3:20 - 3:25 pace w/ 6-minute breaks.  Picked a great friggin' day for it too!

I was scheduled to do 4 reps but the heat made me re-think that - I also had the plyometrics to do after the cool down, and I was coming off my first double-running day yesterday.  Three would be fine for today.

I told myself to make sure that first one was on the slower side as I could always crank it up on the last two if needed.  First one was really easy - came in at 3:24.  I felt fully recovered after 4-minutes and I thought of just jumping into the next one, but I decided to wait it out as the last two were going to be a little faster.  Rep #2 came in at 3:20 on the nose.  

I don't know if it was primarily the heat or just lack of fitness, but I was not recovering as easily between reps 2 and 3.  And due to there now being someone else on the track in lane-1, I needed to cut my rest short on this one to avoid having to lap them twice during the run.  So off I went after a 4:30 break.  Nice first 200m, but at 350m I already felt some fatigue - not a good sign.  By 450m I was already slipping above 3:20 pace.  But because I was only doing 3-reps instead of 4, I decided I was going to get this rep under 3:20, so that's what I did.  Came in at 3:19.2 to be exact.  Finished up w/ the plyos.

Combined w/ the warm up and cool down I totaled about 5-miles on the day.  Overall, I was satisfied w/ the workout.  I can't tell how much the heat affects things at this point but it doesn't really matter I guess.  Just do the workout as best you can - the times/HRs will come down as the temps drop.  

Training
9/3:  3 x 1000m @ 3:24, 3:20, 3:19  Rest times of 6-min and 4.5-min.  Basic plyos afterwards.  WU and CD totaled about 3-miles

No comments: