Making the Adjustments

Last post (which garnered several great comments) covered a few different topics that caused me to re-think some aspects of my training that would hopefully lead to me hitting my workouts better.

#1.  Cutting back the pace of my daily runs.  (days between workouts)

#2.  Keeping an eye on the pace of my warm up 200s to ensure they don't take anything away from the subsequent session.

3.  Getting more rest overall, and making sure I take my recovery drink post workout.

In short - doing several little things that would add up to me being fully rested and ready to give my best effort during the hard sessions.

Over the past several days, I started to  implement these ideas and the early returns are showing some positive results.

For starters, I cut back the pace of my Sunday 10-miler to 7:15.  Typically these runs are done between 6:45 and 6:55 and this 20+ second/mile difference made for a very easy run.  Second, I paid more attention to getting my rest over the past several days, and I also added some little things like getting back on the multi-vitamins, making sure I'm properly hydrated, and taking the recovery drink post workout.  

This led up to the Tuesday long interval session where the plan was 1200m-1200m-800m.  After my mile warm up, I made the decision to not time the 200s and just get in a good solid stride effort getting me ready for the intervals.  Target pace for the 1200s was about 3:55, and about 2:35 for the 800m.  

The workout went off without a hitch:  first 1200m - 3:55, 2nd 1200m - 3:52, and the 800m came in on target at 2:35.  I was pretty gassed afterwards and I believe some of that is due to the fact that I haven't done any short fast intervals yet (they're starting up next week, although they'll be in high volume at first and thus slightly slower than usual)  I find when I'm hitting the fast intervals once a week I do better on these longer ones, but right now we're trying to build upon the distance and threshold work to add some strength before getting into the speed.

Overall a good solid workout.  Unlike some of the previous ones, I didn't cut it short, didn't adjust any of the reps, etc.  I hit the workout exactly the way we drew it up.  That doesn't sound like much, but the way it's been going lately I needed to hit one of these before the confidence started fading.  Doing two 1200s at that pace was a big deal for me - there's a huge difference between 800m and 1200m on these intervals, and usually if there's only one that's longer than 800 I can kind of gear up mentally for that one rep - but when you've got two of them it forces you to be more disciplined on the first one, and concentrate more on the 2nd one, making for a challenging day.  I was very pleased to not only come through it w/ the struggles I've been having, but rep #2 was actually faster than rep #1.  Something to build on mentally.

The base period is now almost over.  I'll be transitioning into true "training mode" starting next week, so the importance of sticking w/ the 3-points above is going to be critical if I'm to have success this season.

Training:

Sun, 3/29:  10-miles @ 7:15

Mon, 3/30:  lifting (upper-A, abs) stretching, rolling

Tues, 3/31:  4-miles including 2 x 1200m, 800m intervals (3:55, 3:52, 2:35)