It's been almost a week since the last post - been a little busy. The rest of the week went down as follows:
Wednesday saw a return to the gym for the first time in I don't know how long (great to be back) followed by a nice steady 5-miler. Thursday's run was about 6.5 miles at a slightly easier pace, and Friday was 4.5 miles at a good steady clip.
Saturday was the threshold workout which wound up being nothing more than a 2-mile run at 5:46 pace. (4-miles w/ warm up and cool down)
Sunday was supposed to be the long day, but the weather was lousy and I felt like taking a break - so a big fat zero for Sunday.
This week sees the return of the long interval sessions (finally!) Tuesday's workout is going to be a bear, but I'm really looking forward to it. It's been too damn long since I've run at a halfway decent pace. Threshold running is difficult because of the length of the runs vs the short rests - but the fact of the matter is, 5:40 pace puts me squarely in no-man's land: Too fast to be comfortable, too slow to be fun. (as a result I can't say I enjoy those sessions much)
Of course long intervals hurt like hell and I'm sure I'll be hating it about halfway through every single session I do - but at least I'll feel like I'm out of "base mode" and finally training once again to run middle distance races. (although it's been difficult to tell w/ my non-racing history, that really is the point of this whole thing!)
Training:
Wed, 3/18: lifting (upper-A, light legs, abs) stretching, rolling
PM 5-miles @ 6:52 pace
Thurs, 3/19: 6.5 miles @ 6:59
Fri, 3/20: 4.5 miles @ 6:45
Sat, 3/21: 4 miles including 2-miles tempo @ 5:46 pace (if you can call it that - just 2 lousy miles)
Sun, 3/22: Off (unscheduled) Weather sucked, felt I'd rather take a break. (for shame!!)
5 comments:
I'm sort of jealous as it's back to base mode for us now the track season is almost finished.
Are there still longish tempo runs in the plan or is that type of training over?
To you it might hardly be worth mentioning, but personally I'd love to be able to run 2 miles at 5:46 pace.
I might just about be able to do that in a race, but in a training run? No chance!
Thanks for the comments guys, always appreciated. Being that most of us (certainly me) are in the unenviable position of doing 95%+ of our running alone, getting feedback here really helps keep me going in a positive frame of mind, so thanks for checking in.
Ewen - At this point the long tempo is probably out. I know I stated that I really wanted to focus on some of that during my base mode, but I wound up screwing that up. The thing is, my builds typically get faster and faster as I get closer to the season, and I've been doing a lot of cruise intervals lately. I seem to run these CIs at 5k-10k pace (i.e. faster than threshold). When I do tempo now I feel like staying close to that CI pace (5:38 - 5:42), but it's too fast a pace for me to do say a 4-5 mile tempo run. What I should have done was focus on some long tempo BEFORE I got too far into the cruise intervals. That way I could have done them at a 5:5x pace and then moved into the CIs later at the 5:40 pace.
I guess I could try throwing in a longer tempo run in there somewhere, but at this point I think I'm too far along for it to be a focus of the training. Next build (in the fall) I'll probably do some long tempo very early on and move to the CIs later.
Thomas - I'd gladly trade you some of that for some of your mental toughness on those kinds of runs and races! You seem to stay focused and tough throughout, regardless of the circumstances - and believe me I wish I had a lot more of that!
Mike, help me out here are you following Daniels or Lydiard now?
Hi Mark. My training is much closer to Daniels when it comes to the reps/intervals stuff. My threshold stuff is more of a Peter Coe thing (i.e. leaning more towards cruise intervals at 5k-10k pace), and I do try to incorporate a longer base period than Daniels typically suggests.
I'm training for 800m to 1-mile race distances, so my program will be quite a bit different than the distance runners regardless.
Actually, you've met my coach I believe. She's a lady who lives out in your neck of the woods who I remember you commenting on - she's the lady who went past you on that half marathon a while back. She used to be coached by Daniels personally, but found some things that worked better for her w/ another coach.
I've been taking my cues from her for about a year now - it's close to Daniels in some respects, but it's got a few differences.
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