The marathon plan had a killer scheduled for today: 8 x 1000m. This was supposed to be run at 80% of max HR but since I don't have any idea of what this means for me personally, except that it's supposed to be around marathon pace, I figured that I'd try for 3:45 per interval. The recovery was 400m but since I had very little time to warm-up and couldn't afford to spend more than an hour on the run, I reduced this to 300m.
I ran down to the river and as soon as I got off the track section and onto the road, I started the intervals. I began well and pushed the pace from the outset. I was pleased with the first interval but the recovery was barely sufficient and I wondered how I would fare for the remainder. The second interval went well too but as usual, with the Garmin on interval mode, I wasn't able to see what pace I was running them at.
It got harder and harder from then on. The recoveries went by too quickly and it was all too soon before I was off again. I tried to picture myself at the track, cruising kilometres in front of Thierry and Fred, but I was on the road and it was dark and it was nothing like the track and I was hurting. My legs would begin to tie up towards the end so I was obviously running lactic, or still not fully recovered from the weekend. I felt slower and cursed myself for not trying harder.
Back home, I was able to see the results:
3:44, 3:40, 3:38, 3:45, 3:36, 3:46, 3:46, 3:46
I was pleased with this as the last 3 intervals I found really hard and I thought that I was running closer to 4 minutes than 16km/h.
12.9 km all up in 58:19 or an average of 4:31/km.
To cap a good day, I was able to make it to the club session. Nico wanted me to accompany him for his 8x1000m but with the session this morning, I decided just to tak eit easy. I admit that I was very tempted by the VO2 max test over 2km but reason stepped in, and I just jogged around the track.
I watched Nico run some impressive intervals around 3:25 off 90 seconds recovery. He's flying at the moment. I chatted with José, Charles and others managing to clock up 12.6km in 1:12 or an average of 5:42/km. Nice to relax for once.
3 comments:
Jamie, I reckon you persuade yourself these sessions are harder than they are. McMillan suggests you should be doing 1km reps at 3:30 pace (if you're running a 2:53 marathon) which would be consistent with the pace of the blokes in our squad who would run a similar marathon time. Appreciate it's much harder by yourself.
Tom - you're right that if I was running on the track and accompanied with runners of similar abilities then I would be aiming for these times.
However, I'm by mself, it's 6:00am (and I'm barely awake) and I'm on the roads which aren't necessarily flat.
Apart from that I've no excuse ;)
Hold on Tom!
Just checked McMillan for speed workouts - between 3:29 and 3:37 for my marathon time. So I was pretty bloody close. Even at 6:00am in the morning.
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