Monday – 3 mile easy run. Week 1 Day 1 and he starts it with an easy 3 mile run. The temptation for me was not to go farther or harder. Koda, my Golden Retriever with the onset of hip dysplasia appreciated the pace.
Wednesday- easy run for recovery from the SO long run left me wanting more. A 3 mile run but I wanted to stick to plan.
Thursday – I woke up with a little fatigue in the legs. I’m usually not a streaker. I define being a streaker as running consecutive days anything longer than 3 days. So usually by the fourth day if I wake up and before my feet hit the ground I’ll decide whether or not I’ll run or not. Today I had no choice. In sticking with the plan I knew that today was a hill workout. Hal says to find a hill, any pitch will do about a quarter mile long. I have just the hill just outside my house. I started with a warm up of 2 miles and hit my hill. The hill is exactly a quarter mile from bottom to top so cresting it each time was the plan. It rises about 140 feet in the quarter, it is fairly punishing it is steep to begin with the grade lessens for about the middle third and the final third is the steepest grade. This is the type of hill the city closes down during snow events. I’m going to call it “the Horn” not only because the name of the street is actually Horne Street but because I know this horn will actually prod me to improvement.I’ve attached a graph from my Garmin Training center. As you can see at mile 2 is where the hill repeats began. After a quarter mile I came close to maxing out on my heart rate, something I’ve always had questions about. My speed is kind all over but never drops to zero. It’s neat to see how my heart rate recovers on the downhills. I wish my speed could have been a little more consistent on the downhills..
By the third repeat I was spend I did everything I could to hold my pace to the top and was reduce to a walk once I crested the hill. My heart rate was 98% of maximum but I felt victorious. I completed the hardest workout of the week thus far and I didn’t die.
Friday –rest day. Remarkably I felt good when I woke up and I resisted the urge to do anything but rest. Hal has been around a lot longer than I have so I trusted his wisdom.
Saturday – 5 miles at Goal Marathon Pace. The 8 minutes I knew would not be hard for 5 miles. What would prove to be hard was finding a relatively flat course like the marathon course where I could test the pacing. My hometown is not flat. It is built on the side of a river bank so anything north to south gains a lot of elevation. East to west is flatter but still rolls a lot more than wanted so I picked the flat city block I could find close to home and ran in circles. Unfortunately, I’ve kind of lost touch with pace and my pace ended up being closer to 7:49 than 8:00. For 5 miles at 8 minute pace I expected to be around 40 minutes exactly. I ended off the day at 38 and change.
Sunday - The long runs may prove to be my undoing. Not so much the distance but fitting the distance into a specified time slot. With my ultra training I always scheduled long runs for Saturday early am. Although Hal says you can switch them up he has a preference for the GMP run to precede the long run. Sundays for my family usually involve early morning commutes to a swim meet in some far off locale. The more kids involved the more time is needed to embark. This year we have four kids. I woke up at 5 am and we planned to leave the house by 7:30. So fitting in a easy 10 mile run in between was going to be tight. I did it but I had to increase my pace in the back half to get the job done.
WEEK SUMMARY
It wasn’t too bad! It was definitely a full week and I feel like I’ve accomplished something big. Confucious says “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”. Week one down, 17 more to go.
Nice solid week although I am surprised to see GMP and repeats so soon?
ReplyDeleteSeems like once again we're on a similar trajectory!