Long run. I've been frustrated with feeling slow lately, and after getting some comments from Fatboy and an anonymous (probably a genius, and very likely kind, generous, and handsome) reader, and reading about some of Andrew's Renato Canova-inspired training, as well as some Daws, and some Lydiard, it's become very clear that base training doesn't mean slow training. I've been conditioned over time to think that anything faster than 6:00 pace is 'hard' and 'fast'. I need to get past it, and today I took a step.
I did five sets of two miles on two miles off. The 'on' portions were at my best guess at a high aerobic pace, a pace that felt comfortable enough to settle into and feel good for a while, but still quite strong. This ended up consistently being 5:45-5:50 pace and a heart rate of 158-160. Here are the splits: 5:47-156|5:50-159, 6:20-158(hill)|5:45-160, 5:44-159|5:48-160, 5:44-158|5:44-160, 5:54-158|5:56-160. The last set was interesting. I was coming back into a breeze, maybe a 5mph wind, and I got really cold. I could also feel my form wavering. I don't know how much was just getting tired, and how much was the cold and the breeze. HR was consistent though, so I would guess 50/50.
The 'off' portions ended up being 6:30-6:45 pace and heart rates of 140-145 early and 145-150 later in the run. 6:19 pace and 152 average HR overall. Felt like I could have gone another two or four miles, but it was very cold and a good time to stop.
Overall, I felt great, and 1.5 hours later, I have some general tightness and a bit of a depleted feeling. The weather was a big factor today, as you will see in some pics I will post, but I overcame it pretty well, I think. I'd better get used to it, because the weather won't get much better until March. WooT!
Run Two | Weather | Supplemental | Nutrition | Sleep | Injury
6 comments:
Nice run. You're going to start seeing some nice improvement with these kinds of efforts.
Point taken by anonymous on the anaerobic thing. My point is that, in this part of the cycle, you risk going overboard with too much anaerobic work too early.
If you're feeling slow, it might help to hit up your old coach for access to the indoor track, and get in some strides (20 x 60), plyometrics, etc. on recovery days. Nothing crazy, just keep things loose. Marathon training doesn't have to make you slow.
nice run Eric, I will need to try that w\o sometime, it sounds familiar. FB makes a good point, my slowness this last year was most likely due to any kind of work in form or to keep loose.
Good run, especially that you felt you could go another 2-4 miles. Man, that weather must be brutal.
Your words will be used against you:
"(an anonymous (probably a genius, and very likely kind, generous, and handsome) reader"
sorry I'm not a "genius" and I'll dismiss "kind" and "generous" but not "handsome" because it assumes that I'm male.
So on to this:
Anyway, none of this tells me what I am interested to know: how do I key in on the right kinds of aerobic efforts during the base phase? I'm very keen to try what Andrew has been doing, which is basically MP and slightly faster than MP efforts during his key workouts, supplemented with plenty of volume.
Anyone care to weigh in on that question? Please?
Question #1 How did your run today ( 12/3) fit into your plan? What was it supposed to accomplish?
Your base phase should get you to the point of coming back day after day, so can you do this: "2:06:16 :: 20 miles" tomorrow? If not then you dug too deep. If you can't you've dug into your race reserves, good for us workout junkies but worthless for your base conditioning.
I'll likely do very little anaerobic work, so no concerns about going over the top with it. The strides, plyo, etc. is on the way as I build back up strength in the bad leg. Thanks for the workout ideas as well.
Mark, last winter when I built up I averaged 95 miles a week with about half of fifteen weeks over 100 miles--with almost nothing faster than 7:00 pace. I ended up having a hard time running a single six-minute mile at the end of that! It took about a month to come around, and soon I was running much faster, but it was quite an eye opener for me. Slow running will help, but a lot of it will make you slow for a while.
Wayne, the weather is/was brutal. I'll try to post some pics tonight. I've lived here 33 years, and run here nearly twenty of those, and I've never been so frosted up as today.
Anonymous, I'll just stop with my jackass sense of humor. It's obviously not adding anything to the conversation.
The purpose today was to do a long run of twenty miles. How it went down was off the cuff, and inspired by Andrew's recent workouts and Fatboy's recent comments. If I knew what I was doing, I probably wouldn't have done it.
That said, I'm very happy I did it. I feel like I broke out of my post-injury rut, and finally got back to within a step or two of where I was back in August. Lydiard says that as long as the effort is aerobic, it can't hurt me. Today, I trusted him.
Could I do this workout again tomorrow? Absolutely. I feel great this evening, and I don't doubt that I could do it again. I finished feeling strong, and could have tacked on another 2/2. I think I was smart not to, but I could have. I'm cognizant of the fact that I have 25 weeks to goal. Twenty five weeks is a long time, but in some ways, it's not that long.
Thanks for the comments, everyone.
"Anonymous" asked for some clarification on aerobic training and what works best. It's impossible to make a declarative statement that works for everybody. On the Dec. 1 comments, I posted a few workouts that I've used in the past with great success. Some people would benefit from more recovery time (Mike), some with less.
There's a decent high-level article in Active.com (just google "aerobic threshold training") that has some discussion on heart rate ranges, etc. If you like to play with your Heart Monitor, it could help. I'm unabashedly old-school, and have developed a strong sense of feel for where I'm at metabolically, and I stand by that approach as it's most effective in racing situations.
The key guidelines - run longer intervals just below race pace to get used to hanging out in that zone. Run shorter intervals with the goal of at least 20-30 sec/mile faster than race pace to improve economy. If this is anaerobic, the interval is too long; shorten it, because the pacing benefit is worth it.
The workouts I listed are very long by design - they would be impossible to complete if you were running anaerobically.
Post a Comment