It is not the mountain that we conquer, but ourselves.
So said Edmund Hillary and he wasn't one who gave up lightly. When I planned earlier this week to go to the track to run intervals today, I found plenty of arguments to postpone this session, convert it into a long endurance run or anything, rather than going out and doing it. To help me mentally, I rang Nick and Andy and organised the session with them for first thing Saturday morning. There was no backing out now.
We set off together to run the 4.5 km down to the track and once down there we decided on what actually we would do. My previous sessions have been 6x1200 off 400 recovery, but I let Nick choose our suffering today. A pyramid session it was to be: 400, 800, 1200, 1200, 800, 400. Recovery for the first 2 intervals was to be 200m and then 400 after the 1200 sessions.
I set off enthusiastically for the first one with Nick just behind and Andy just trailing Nick. This sequence was then repeated on each interval until the end when Nick pushed me all the way over the last 400m.
The intervals went as follows: 1:17 ; 2:51 ; 4:27 ; 4:24 ; 2:49 ; 1:14.
I was pleased as I was speeding up as the session went on and the 1200 intervals were faster than any of my previous sessions down there. It was encouraging to have others running the intervals with me and this boosted me mentally. Nick was just behind but on a good day, he should be right alongside me. Andy looked very pale by the end but hoipefully this will encourage him to put some more running training in over the Summer and to leave his bike at home every now and then !
A slow jog back for about 17 km all up. Not too hot today and very overcast which helped.
Footing
10 years ago
4 comments:
A very generous "just behind me" in today's comments. I did
1:23 ; 3:02 ; 4:52 ; 4:48 ; 2:59 ; 1:15
Probably should have done better on the 800s and 1200s but was happy overall. I certainly ran out the stresses and strains of the working week which is never a bad thing. Looking forward to tomorrow.
McMillan (http://www.mcmillanrunning.com/Running%20University/Article%201/mcmillanrunningcalculator.htm)
says that you should be running the 1200m in 4:26 - 4:39 and the 800m in 2:53 - 3:01. So your 800m times are in the bracket but you need to speed up on the 1200m intervals.
I used a 10km time of 39:10 to get these results.
Don't live slavishly by Macmillan. Should be running those 800s and 1200s quicker given how much recovery you're giving yourselves. Macmillan suggests 2:38-2:45 for 800s and 4:08-4:20 for 1200s for someone aiming for 37:30....
Thanks for the encouragement Tom !!
I wasn't far outside of the McMillan times on the second set, just 4 seconds outside for both the 800m and the 1200m.
I compared these times with your HuRTs companion Mike and I'm running faster than him over 400m and he's managed 37:13 for 10 km. All is not lost !
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