[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y66j_BUCBMY&w=560&rel=0]
so today’s scheduled training was…
Warm up for 1.6K at a comfortable pace
800 Meters at 5:00 – 5:15
400 Meter Rest Interval (walk or jog)
800 Meters at 5:00 – 5:15
400 Meter Rest Interval (walk or jog)
800 Meters at 5:00 – 5:15
Cool down for 1.6K at a comfortable pace
I woke up just after 3am, raring to go… I was feeling fairly confident about the intervals; after all, I’d managed a 4:51 and 4:50 for the first 2kms at parkrun this weekend, and it was only a couple of months ago I was doing 1km repeats at a similar pace…
what actually happened can be best summed up as “very hard work” lol.
I wasn’t sure if I’d hit 5:00 at all until I looked at data. The 1.6km warm-up I felt like I had a few residual niggles and sluggishness – took a while to warm-up but once I did things felt fine.
All 3 of the 800m intervals were hard work on the legs and breathing. Had the usual speedwork feeling with breathing – of areas of my lungs opening up for the first time in years. Probably some truth in that, what with me being an ex-smoker and everything!
The 400m recovery periods were pretty much 100m or so walk, then the remainder light jog.
My 1.6k cool down was mostly walked because I had nothing left! At one stage I tried to get a light jog going and literally had nothing there. I did do the last few hundred metres as a jog though.
So when I got back and looked at the data…
OK first 800m interval… target pace 5:00 to 5:15 actual pace varied between 5:23 and 4:50 2nd interval started at 4:51 and slowed steadily to 5:30 and then came down towards 5 again towards end 3rd one blew out to 5:38 – but pulled it back into 5:05 to 5:15 range for the last third
Yup – this was hard work!!
With hindsight I was a little too confident going in – with parkrun I had a 25 min pacer to follow, the crowd effect etc. and the benefits of the 1km repeats work has probably worn off by now, and I do vaguely remember the 5:00 pace being very very very hard work.
It’s all good though – my delusions of grandeur have been shattered LOL, I got a good hard workout, and another training session is in the bag, taking me one step closer to London Marathon on April 13th, and Gold Coast Marathon on July 6th!
Strava Link: http://www.strava.com/activities/112478487
Food Diary: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/diary/nmmfg?date=2014-02-11