Warming up beforehand I wasn't looking forward to 20 laps of the track at any effort above easy. The opening lap to get HR up to 140 was probably my fastest - I crossed the line for the start of the five mile test with 140 on the HRM. I kept my HR pretty constant, although it dropped a few times to 133 for a few seconds despite keeping the same effort. The run also served as mid-week medium long run of over 14 miles as I am helping out at the Club's annual 5 mile road race in Carrigaline on Sunday and will not get in back to back long runs.
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The result is certainly encouraging and though initially I though the cool calm conditions would have favoured a faster pace my first evaluation 3 weeks ago was run under similar conditions. I suspect that the improvement will be more modest in 3 weeks time.
That's a good improvement. It'll be interesting to see how the next one goes. I'm in the process of bumping up the weekly volume and distance of long runs to see if that gives an improvement.
ReplyDeleteYes, you'd have to be happy with that! What's the general training plan for further improvements before the next test?
ReplyDeleteGood improvement and plenty of room for further improvement. Keep at it.
ReplyDeleteI guess I'll see you in 2 weeks in Ballycotton?
Ha ha, only an engineer would use two decimal points of a percentage point.
ReplyDeleteGood stuff though
Interesting test Grellan a good way to gauge progress
ReplyDeleteThanks Ewen. I'd say the gains will be much more modest as time goes on. Certainly increasing volume will give you improvement without increasing speed (yet!)
ReplyDeleteScott,the general plan is to continue with the relatively high volume and no speedwork for the next few months until I have a solid base. I will introduce some low end speedwork when I reduce volume while tapering for the Ultra on 10th April.
Thomas, yeah I'll stick at it for another while. I think the improvement curve will flatten out a lot though. Ballycotton, great! You can hitch a ride with me if you wish. Is that an MP run for you or will you go for the PB, which you're certainlt capable of.
Elmer, yeah I'm a sucker for numbers. Two decimal places will pick up the tiniest imporvement whch is all I need to keep me motivated - that and the default spreadsheet I used, otherwise i'd have selected 5 decimal places.
Cheer Rob. Will I see you tomorrow for the Eagle 5?