A Slow & Cruel Reality
After sitting back this evening and having a cursory scan of the last seven days, I’m much happier with my performance than expected. Given I’ve been feeling rundown, AND had a bike accident, I had feared/expected much worse. I should have stopped here.
Unfortunately, as the devil is always in the detail, I delved into the splits from yesterday’s workout and my feeling of content quickly sagged.
The group met at Beaver Lake yesterday morning, our new location of choice and after a gentle warm-up Jon gave the instructions. “You, you and you will be running 12k; the rest will be doing 15k.”
“Wait a minute”, I thought to myself, “I’m sure he said I was doing a 45’ tempo run, surely he must be mistaken”.
He wasn’t.
And so after a couple months of enjoyable cross-country workouts in Beacon Hill, I launched into Saturday’s session with equal parts fear and excitement. The w/o was supposed to be done as 1k at marathon effort followed by 2k at 10k effort, repeated five times. It wasn’t until half way through the session that it dawned on me that I hadn’t run 15k at effort since my last marathon. What was I doing? The splits are as follows (1k ME, 2k 10kE):
3:50, 7:32
3:48, 7:43
4:11, 7:44
4:12, 7:41
3:47, 7:34
Sadly the times are a little deceiving/disappointing. They don’t taken into account long/short kilometers or all the people, dogs and corners that running in tight trails can bring. I had hoped to hit 3:45 for my ME and closer to 3:30 for my 10kE; I didn’t run one kilometer even close to my hoped-for 10k pace. Bugger it all. If I was ever looking forward to this weekends upcoming first race of the season, that feeling has now left the building. Based on that w/o, I should be able to run a 37’ 10k, I REALLY hope I can run faster than that.
I’m off to Ottawa tomorrow morning, early, and will not be running outside. I hope everyone has a great week of running, and until later ~ ciao!
Training:
Thursday: easy 41:25
Friday: easy 1:10:40
Saturday: 1:37:50 with 5x (1k ME, 2k 10kE) continuous
Sunday: easy/steady 1:31:38
Weekly mileage: 7h21’33”, +/- 104k or 65 miles
3 comments:
Hey Michael - probably getting too technical here, but if I punch up say a 2:45 marathon on McMillan, the delta in pace between marathon and 10k is about 24-seconds/km.
In your workout you had an average difference of about 8-seconds/km.
Had you slowed your ME recoveries down say 8-10 seconds, do you think you'd have been able to hit your target pace on the 10kE portion?
That seems to be a pretty tough workout - nice job.
Hey Michael,
The cruel reality is that you will be heading over to Ottawa which is like -40.
Sucks to hear u got a bike accident. At the same time, it looks like it wasn't too serious.
Enjoy the harsh capital city.. :)
The devil is in a dog suit causing unsuspecting cyclists to tumble.
The devil be damned! Ottowa is too cold for him. Enjoy your week of indoor running. You'll soon drive him from the details.
I'm not sure, though, that he can be driven from the dog suit.
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