Tuesday 9 September 2008

Premature Recovery

This four week phase of my training programme ends with a recovery week leading to a HM tune-up race. As I have the Blarney Half Marathon next Sunday I have swapped weeks 3 and 4, taking the recovery week this week instead.
Sunday's recovery day was welcome as my calves were a little tight after Saturdays 20 miler. The tightness was still evident during Mondays base pace run over 7.7 miles but had eased by Monday evening when I churned out another 2.5 miles on the treadmill. I am being careful with not overdoing things so close to marathon day as it was at this stage in my previous training cycle that I developed ITBS, followed the week after by calf cramps which essentially prevented me from completing long (ITBS) and tempo runs (cramps) during the six weeks leading up to the Cork Marathon - just when I needed them the most.
This evenings mixed intervals at the track went off quite well particularly as it was a cutback session with 2k @ HM Pace, 1 Mile @ 10k pace, 1k @ 5k pace and 800m @ 3k pace. The times compared to those of 2 weeks ago compare reasonably well as follows:-

Scheduled Dist & (Pace) - 9th Sept - (25th Aug) 2,000m @ HM (06:30) - 06:18 - (06:15) 3,000m 1 Mile @ 10k (06:09) - 06:01 - (06:00) 1,000m @ 5k (05:56) - 05:45 - (05:48) 800m @ 3k (05:40) - 05:37 - (05:38)

Garmin measured the paces for each Interval as 06:05, 05:50, 05:31 & 05:31 but I'll go with the track distances and assume that the satellites had a job tracking me going around in circles.

Have a good week.

Mon 8th Sept

  • a.m. 7.72 Miles in 01:00:35 (07:51 Pace)
  • p.m. 2.5 Miles in 00:19:50 (07:56 Pace)

Tue 9th Sept

  • 6.98 Miles in 00:52:31 (07:32 Pace) with Mixed Intervals 2k to 0.8k @ 06:18 to 05:37 pace

5 comments:

  1. My experience w/ the Garmin @ the track is that it ALWAYS errors on the fast side. It seems to think that the 1/4 mile track is 0.26 miles and that consequently screws up its pace calculation.

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  2. Hi Grellan

    I was looking at your post previous to this one and think you could go closer to 3:00 than 3:15. You certainly have the speed to do it and I think that is the greatest hurdle for most people. You are right that at this moment you could not extend that pace for 26.2 as you know how hard that last 10k really is. On the other hand, if you get great weather and just have one of those days when your body just has it????

    Best of luck my friend and I will look forward to seeing how you do.

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  3. Yes, I agree with Mike re the Garmins and the track, although the new Garmins with updated software are more accurate. Nothing as accurate as the actual track measurements though ;)

    Good times on that session - at least you're not getting slower!

    That was a great 20 miler. Remember, on the day you'll be rested, tapered, psyched up, fully fueled etc, so listen to Bill. Go for something close to the magical 3 hours.

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  4. Wow, that's a massive difference between the Garmin and the track paces. I'm very surprised to see such a discrepancy.

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  5. Thomas - although the discrepancy seems large, it's really just a small issue it has calculating the lap distance.

    For example every lap should read 0.25 miles, but for me the Garmin always records a lap as 0.26. This is a 4% error. Assuming you're running a 6-minute mile (360 seconds), 4% of 360 is 14.4 which is about the error Grellan is seeing in his Garmin's pace calculation.

    The real issue is just the distance calculation, and unlike going down a road or a trail, when you go in a circle or oval the Garmin keeps making the same mistake over and over again so slight errors never average out or get resolved - the 4% error is just a constant. As such you'll see about a 4% error in the pace almost all the time when doing miles on the track.

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