Wednesday, 2 January 2008

Late Start to the Week/Year

While Monday was a scheduled rest day a tummy bug laid me up all day Tuesday - I didn't have the energy to move and every muscle in my body ached.
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I have taken the rest of the week off work as Abina is working and the Kids are not back to school until Monday next. I also have a few odd jobs around the house to complete.

So - I missed Tuesdays scheduled easy 6 miler but was back in shape for todays :-

8 x 45 second hill repeats at mile pace with 2 min active recoveries
- holy Sh** - mile pace and hills, it must be wrong. Nope that what is says on the programme - 2 mile warm-up/down with 8 of these in between. I'm almost sorry I did the 5:40 mile on Christmas day now.

The hill I had in mind was about 3.1 miles from home so I adjusted the warm-up/down accordingly. I decided to run the hills at mile effort as opposed to pace as I knew that I wouldn't get beyond the first rep otherwise.

The first 2 reps, while hard, went reasonably well. However the continued loading was becoming more stressful - My active recoveries from rep 3 on consisted of 30 seconds of heavy gasping followed by a shuffle down the hill to the start of the next rep. I consciously reduced the pace slightly for the last 2 reps so that I could keep my form and an even pace for the full 45 seconds. The paces varied from 06:00 (rep 1) to 06:30 (rep 8).

Overall I completed about 8.6 miles in 01:13:07 (08:30 pace @ avg 143 HR -ouch)

Before I completed this post my four year old, Saran, threw up on the floor beside me. The bug I had has obviously spread. It didn't appear to knock an ounce out of him. It's great how kids can handle illness much better than adults. He's in the bath now which should calm him and help send him into a deep sleep for the night.

4 comments:

  1. That is one hell of a workout.

    I wouldn't worry about the overall pace and HR for the workout - that is not from where the benfits are achieved.

    Best of health to the little one.

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  2. Crazy, mile pace going uphill. Tell me what program are you following? Do you have a link to it?

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  3. That sounds hard Grellan - I'm gasping heavily just thinking about it.

    Well done on your second year of running - and finishing it with a PB - good stuff! By the way, I just 'beat' you on mileage - 4,123km for me - my biggest year for quite a while.

    All the best for '08 mate!

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  4. Mike, The programme is in a book "Brain Training for Runners" by Matt Fitzgerald. There is no link but there is reference to www.trainingpeaks.com/cuttingedge. I checked this out and it appears to offer other training programmes (at a price).

    The book is fowarded by Tim Noakes, of "Lore of Running" fame, who endorses the training programmes.

    It gets worse with 8 x 90 second hills reps @ mile pace scheduled for week 6 and 8 x 2 min hills reps @ 3k pace in week 7. I will have to find a longer hill with a more gentle slope. I intend to do these reps by sustainable effort as opposed to pace.

    The programme also includes 10k pace tempo runs, the longest of which is 5.5 miles (8.8k) in week 15 - 9 days before a 10k tune-up race. Makes sense perhaps.

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