I was scheduled to run my interval workout on Wednesday morning before getting the last minute Christmas stuff done. The benefit here would be two down days between the back-to-back sessions Sat & Sun and the interval session - however the weather was OK today and tomorrow it's supposed to be some heavy rain accompanied by 20 mph winds. Not the best weather for 1000m repeats. . . . so I pushed up the workout a day.
This would give me three quality sessions in four days, and on top of that I haven't been sleeping well at all the past two nights. It's a rare occurrence, but I was not looking forward to a session at the track. The thing that got me quasi-motivated was that JT was only having me do 3 x 1000m intervals, where it would normally be 4. (We've been averaging slightly over 4km total volume per interval session) The reason for this is that she mentioned to me that we have specific things to work on next week, and that it would be as she put it - "really, really hard" She even mentioned that she was going to probably have to give me step by step updates as to how I would be feeling at certain stages of the workout so that I didn't think I was way off.
(this isn't a good sign - but I'm not going to worry about it until next week)
I told myself, "so you feel like shit - you only have to do three, it's no big deal". Target pace was 3:15-3:16 and I was getting 3-minutes break between each.
Surprisingly, the workout went OK. After my mile and 2 x 200m warm up the first two 1000s went very smoothly: 3:12 and 3:13 w/ each one about 2:34 at the 800m mark. The last one was a bit of a pain as I got a nasty side stitch about 500m in. I came through in 3:17 which was disappointing. What was really strange was that my HR was recovering back to under 120 less than 2-minutes after each interval. This was odd because I certainly didn't feel fully recovered by then, and I've felt better w/ higher HR during recoveries in the past. I'll just chalk it up to an anomaly at this point, and keep a close eye on my interval recoveries during the next few workouts.
Now I get to look forward to a nice fat Christmas goose!! (family tradition) Not the healthiest of Christmas feasts but hey, you can cut through all that cholesterol and fat w/ a hefty portion of red wine I understand! ; )
Happy Holidays everybody!!
Training:
Mon, 12/22: Off
Tues, 12/23: 4-miles including 3 x 1000m w/ 3-min rests (3:12, 3:13, 3:17)
2 comments:
I have that feeling too on some interval sessions. Perhaps it's because even though the cardio-vascular system is fit (recovers quickly), the legs are still tired and not all lactic acid has been processed?
You know, the more I think about it - the more I think you're probably correct.
JT's got me doing "lactate training" starting soon and I believe the purpose is to get me to be able to run at a fast pace through heavy lactic acid levels over and over again until I can do it in an 800m race after the point where it feels like I'm dead.
Probably a good time to start that kind of work, although I believe it's quite painful!
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