Slight Improvement

Back at the track today for a 5 x 1000m threshold workout.  Originally we had planned a long interval session for today, but being that we moved up the tough rep session into this week, JT wanted to push that workout out until next Saturday.  That was fine by me, I think I'd have gotten crucified if I had attempted that one today - my legs are still not all the way back.

Standard deal here - mile warm up, stretch, 2 x 200m, re-stretch and then hit the workout.  I was getting my typical 1-minute breaks between repeats.

The 200s during the warmup came in on the quick side which was nice to see (28.6, 29.5) but I know the legs are still not back at 100% - still some residual fatigue.  

Here's a comparison of today's session w/ the same workout performed on November 29th:

Rep #	29-Nov	Ave HR	3-Jan	Ave HR
1	3:33	150	3:28	151
2	3:29	161	3:24	160
3	3:26	165	3:26	161
4	3:25	167	3:25	163
5	3:23	168	3:26	162
Average	3:27.2	162	3:25.8	159

The times are similar, but the HR is considerably better on the last three repeats.  I ran both of these workouts on feel, and I was fully expecting to run similar HRs as compared to last time, but I think the fatigue kept the pace steady after #2 instead of the continuous ramp down.  This in turn kept the HR at about a steady 162 for the last three as opposed to coming up to the 167-168 level.  Also, the max HR of the Nov session was 173, and today it was just 169.

I don't run this workout as a fitness test really, it's just easy to compare when the workout is exactly the same.  The weather was almost identical as luck would have it, so aside from the extra fatigue today, I think this is a pretty fair comparison.  Some improvement for sure, but it's difficult for me determine exactly how much.  If either the pace or the HR were a constant then I'd obviously learn something concrete about the other parameter, but w/ this data being slightly better in both categories, I can't really predict how much better I'd be in one category provided that the other one was indeed the same.  But I guess that's what you get when you don't run the workout as a fitness test!

Training:

Sat, 1/3:  5-miles including:  5 x 1000m (3:28, 3:24, 3:26, 3:25, 3:26)