My legs were still a little achy from Saturday but not wanting to be too lazy I decided to throw 9 sets of strides at them after 1km of this run. Rather than measure distance or time on the watch I simply counted my way through ‘one 1000, two 1000, three 1000…’ all the way to ‘twenty 1000’. This roughly equates to 20 seconds and avoids me having to keep looking at my watch in the dark (helping me to avoid tripping and falling…again!).
By the 9th set I was beginning to find the quads getting a little more tender so I cancelled the 10th and final set as a form of preventative action. I took it easy for the next couple of kms before progressing faster and faster towards the finish, ending in a couple of kms @ 4:30/km pace which I was very happy about being able to do. It’s time to get serious about the faster stuff now so a few weeks of really important training coming up now.
Tuesday, 19th February – 6.5km Recovery run
Before going out for this run I managed to secure my registration for the Chicago Marathon on October 13th – just before the whole site crashed with the amount of traffic it was receiving! The run itself was just a nice easy recovery run in advance of my LT session on Wednesday night. I cut the distance short to be home in time for the Arsenal v Bayern Munich match but it didn’t take long for me to wonder why did I bother...!
Wednesday, 20th February - 16.5km LT Run with 2 x 20mins @ LT
Tonight’s run was one of those statements of intent where I had to force myself psychologically to go out and run at LT effort even though my mind was telling me to take it easy seeing as I’d just done a marathon on Saturday. In reality I was being a big lazy ass just looking for an excuse!
So, after a couple of km warm up I started into the first of my 20mins @ LT. The effort felt sufficiently tough but not excessive and this was confirmed when the HR hovered consistently around the 156bpm range. The first 10mins were on flat pathways with the breeze behind me for the most part before I turned at Collins Ave and the wind became neutralised but I was now on a downhill stretch before flattening out again on Griffith Ave. This last stretch was about 1km into the breeze. Naturally, this coincided with the highest HR and slowest pace of the first half-session. By the end of the 20mins I was happy to take a recovery break of four minutes.
The second half began towards the other end of Griffith Ave and then a 500m hill on Malahide Rd. Again, this resulted in the pace being unspectacular to say the least. Most of the remainder was along Collins Avenue where the breeze would have been on my back but the pace never really improved substantially. Overall, the first session was 9secs/km quicker than the second session, probably mostly to do with favourable conditions but probably also a little to do with me being tired towards the end.
I trotted off home for the remaining 4km as a cool down but still happy enough with the overall effort.
Week 8 Summary:
RTW: 3 from 3 days
DTW: 34.5km
DTY: 566.5km
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