Easy miles with hard two mile run. Today was the second of a pair of speed workouts given to me by Mystery Coach over the last week. Today's two mile was to be run with a first mile of 5:00, then an all-out final mile. I'm preparing for a 5K this weekend, and these two workouts seem to be the ticket to getting my short distance race mentality back online.
Didn't feel the greatest after an easy two mile warmup, which is often a good sign. A couple of 5:00 pace strides during the last mile felt fairly smooth, which was encouraging. Using the first two miles of the 10K course I just ran, I jogged out another minute after the warmup just to set myself up mentally, and I stepped to the line. bang.
4:59.10(168) | 4:54.31(177)
9:53.41. Pretty cool. I haven't run a two mile under ten minutes since the fall of 1995, and I just last week ran my first sub-5 minute mile in seven or eight years. I had a good amount of fear going in to this workout that I wouldn't be able to negative split, but I did, and I actually came out a few seconds faster than I had expected. The first mile went down as expected--relaxed, but hard and definitely stressful. Going in to the second mile, I put in a brief surge to remind myself that this was the part of the workout that counted. About 1/3 of a mile in, there was a short sharp incline that I was concerned about, but it turned out to be a non-factor. I was already venting heavily, and 100 meters later it was the same. At 1.5 miles, there was a significant change in breathing. I went from the familiar very hard breathing to the acidic, metallic breathing of deep oxygen debt. I was very excited to then feel the gears change on demand, and still be able to move powerfully through the last half-mile. Over the last couple of hundred meters, I actually felt my forearms rig up! I always secretly enjoyed that feeling--a kind of confirmation that you have pushed yourself hard enough.
Based on the feeling of the second mile, I guessed I'd hit a 4:57. It felt like I was able to pick up the pace and change gears a couple of times, but usually that feeling is deceptive and I end up just holding steady. I was pretty happy to see that I was able to speed up somewhat after all.
The recovery was a nice surprise also. I recovered from a max of 178 to 130 in 1:10, to 120 in 1:27, and to 110 in 1:47. Finished with another 6 miles at 6:40-7:00 pace.
Overall, I think it was a good run. Although it felt like a race effort, it's hard for me to believe that I couldn't run ten seconds faster than that right now. That confuses me a little bit, and makes me wonder where that race day boost comes from. I'm going in to Sunday's 5K with a boost of confidence, and an increasing amount of speed tolerance. It should be a good race, and hopefully one with some competition.
Run Two | Weather | Supplemental | Nutrition | Sleep | Injury
2 comments:
I guestimated your best one mile effort at 5:00. You sure blew my number out of the water. May you arrive at the finish line on Sunday below 16.
You doing hills for your short race program this summer?
I don't know the course yet, but I know it's certified. I'll crack 16 for the first time since 1995 unless something goes very wrong.
I would say that my speed is the limiting factor in how fast I can run a mile right now. Today my best mile is probably in the 4:45 range, and with another six weeks of speedwork, I see no reason why that wouldn't get down in the low 4:30 range. However, I'm not remotely interested in improving my mile time--I know I'm slow, no need to work hard to prove it! =)
No hills in the program at the moment. For the next marathon build there will be some hills, but they'll be introduced carefully and on soft surfaces to reduce the possibility of the strange hip and leg problem that occurred this spring.
Post a Comment