Mon: 7 miles
Tue: 6.5 miles plus strides and hill sprints
Wed: 10.5 miles
Thu: 6.5 miles
Fri: 10 miles, including 6X300 and 4X100
Sat: 6 miles
Sun: 13.5 miles, including 20 min progression plus 4X1 min on/off
Total: 60 miles
This was the first week of taking my training in a little different direction, and overall I’m pretty pleased with the way it went. I would have liked to have doubled on Tue and Thu, bumping the mileage closer to 70, but with the previous week being such a bust, I wanted to err on the side of caution and opted for some extra rest. As is, I feel like I got in some good work without overdoing it, which is exactly the balance I need to find. As a side note, there was a good bit of ancillary training in my schedule as well that I don’t have written into the above summary, things like drills, general strength exercises, plyos, etc. All those things will be a prominent and important part of my training going forward.
Getting down to the details, Monday was just an easy day to get back into the swing of things after a couple days off. Tuesday was my normal, pre-workout day with strides and hill sprints at the end. I also did the last half mile barefoot on the turf field at Roanoke College. That day was HOT! In fact, it was so hot that based on the forecast for similar weather the next day Andrew and I decided to delay the Wednesday workout until Friday then fit the Friday workout into Sunday’s long run. I think that turned out to be a very good decision on a couple of different levels.
Accordingly, we did a medium long run on Wednesday, followed by an easy day on Thursday. Friday was a speed development workout consisting of 6X300 with full recovery followed by 4X100 with walk back recovery. My splits were nothing to write home about, but I ran aggressively and accomplished exactly what I set out to do. For the 300’s, I averaged right at 53 sec, which is 4:40 mile pace. The 100’s were run in 15 and 16 sec, and by the end, I could tell I’d completely fatigued what few fast twitch muscle fibers I possess. It was one of those workouts where I definitely gained some respect for sprinters and middle-distance runners!
After an easy day on Saturday, Sunday was 54 min of fairly relaxed running followed by a 20 min progression, a 5 min jog, 4X1 min on/off, and finally a short cooldown. The splits for the progression went 6:13, 6:01, and 5:47 (plus another third of a mile at 5:40 pace to finish the 20 min). I figured the 4X1 min would be pretty slow, but they actually turned out well. I was under 5:20 pace until the last one, which I ran more aggressively and wound up at 4:50 pace on the nose. It was a successful workout and a good way to wrap up the week.
I think if I can string together a good stretch of training like this I’ll make some progress. My first goal is to get to a point where doing intervals at sub-5:20 pace doesn’t feel fast right from the start. That should in turn allow me to start working on my VO2 max, which will then allow me to race well at the 5k-10k distances. I think I have a solid plan that my coach put together for me and I’m excited to see how it plays out. It may be mid-summer before I see results, but that’s ok. I feel like I need to undo some bad before I can start to do some good, so I’m prepared to be patient and do what needs to be done. Onward!
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