This was initially very relaxed and when I saw it hit 5:5x by the end of the first km it jumped me into action and up the effort. Second km was around 5:13/km and felt grand so I maintained it around the 5:00/km Easy pace for the rest of the run and ended up with about 4 sets of strides. I’m going to add this aspect into all easy and recovery runs in future to see if it helps with my running economy/form.
Tuesday, 26th November, 2013 – 11.9km Easy Run (5:16/km)
Met up with Anto and his mate Tom after work for this run. They were looking for an hour long run so that tied in with my 11.9km loop perfectly. Fairly handy run that went by pretty quickly due to the company. Anto seemed to speed things up towards the end but it was still grand.
All done and dusted in plenty of time to have dinner before settling down to watch the Gunners easily beat Marseille. Nice!
Wednesday, 27th November, 2013 - 7.4km Recovery Run (5:35/km)
I was seriously tempted to head to Raheny and do the inaugural race in their Winter Series – a 3 mile race of 3 x 1mile laps – but had originally planned a Tempo run on Thurs evening. So, rather than put the tempo run in jeopardy I decided to stay local and do a recovery run instead. Threw in about 7 strides at the end but kept them easy enough that I would still be fresh for tomorrow.
I used my blue Kayanos for this run and could feel little niggles throughout the gentle run so when I got home I checked the soles and sure enough they were well worn. So, straight to the ‘I may need them sometime, but not now’ pile with them. I am now left to my orange pair (with probably just 200km left on them) and a pair I got off Philip which have plenty of running left yet. Probably soon time to start looking again for a new pair when the sales start.
Thursday, 28th November, 2013 – 10.5km with 9.2km @ LT (4:20/km)
I was advised by Stephen yesterday to ignore the 3 mile race in Raheny in order to focus on this LT test. The objective was to hit 4:20/km for 40 mins. This would suggest that I was back in shape for a decent attempt next weekend. The important factor to monitor was the average HR to see if it went stratospheric like last Saturday. I was pretty confident that wouldn’t happen but I was still eager to see what the numbers were like.
I drove to the Coast Road so as to do the session along the bike/pedestrian lane which is perfect for this sort of run – dead flat, good surface, decent lighting and not too busy. I started with a 1km warm-up and before I knew it I was off doing the faster stuff. The first few kms were grand with my HR taking a little time to hit the mid 150’s which was the expected range. After 3.6km I reached the end of the path and had to turn around. I was a little faster than required to this point and the turnaround gave me a 4:13/km split which in part was due to the GPS getting confused as it always does when doing a 180 degree turn. There was now a decent breeze in my face but thankfully it wasn’t too strong. If anything it was useful to keep me at a nice cool temperature as it was an unseasonably mild evening.
The next couple of kms were dropping closer to the late 4:2x’s, so I reckon the breeze was costing me about 5 seconds per km. Soon I was back in a bit of shelter and the pace upped again. Around this time I found myself getting lazy mentally so had to change it up a gear for the last 15mins. The final couple of kms were back again to the earlier splits and when it came to stopping the watch I was back on the goal pace of 4:20/km.
It was only when I got home that I checked the HR properly and I was very happy to see it average out at 154bpm with a max of 161bpm which was only hit for a very short period of time.
So, according to Jack Daniels I was right in at the correct pace with a HR on the very low end of the range…test passed with flying colours!
Week 47 Summary (so far):
Thursday, 28th November, 2013 – 10.5km with 9.2km @ LT (4:20/km)
I was advised by Stephen yesterday to ignore the 3 mile race in Raheny in order to focus on this LT test. The objective was to hit 4:20/km for 40 mins. This would suggest that I was back in shape for a decent attempt next weekend. The important factor to monitor was the average HR to see if it went stratospheric like last Saturday. I was pretty confident that wouldn’t happen but I was still eager to see what the numbers were like.
I drove to the Coast Road so as to do the session along the bike/pedestrian lane which is perfect for this sort of run – dead flat, good surface, decent lighting and not too busy. I started with a 1km warm-up and before I knew it I was off doing the faster stuff. The first few kms were grand with my HR taking a little time to hit the mid 150’s which was the expected range. After 3.6km I reached the end of the path and had to turn around. I was a little faster than required to this point and the turnaround gave me a 4:13/km split which in part was due to the GPS getting confused as it always does when doing a 180 degree turn. There was now a decent breeze in my face but thankfully it wasn’t too strong. If anything it was useful to keep me at a nice cool temperature as it was an unseasonably mild evening.
 |
| Greyed section is the LT segment. |
It was only when I got home that I checked the HR properly and I was very happy to see it average out at 154bpm with a max of 161bpm which was only hit for a very short period of time.
So, according to Jack Daniels I was right in at the correct pace with a HR on the very low end of the range…test passed with flying colours!
Week 47 Summary (so far):
RTW: 4 from 4 days
DTW: 37.2 km
DTY: 3,618.2 km
That must have been a nice confidence booster! Hope you have a great race in Lanzarote
ReplyDeleteCheers Kate, ya it was good for the confidence alright!
ReplyDelete