Some day, hopefully some day soon, running fast won't hurt. But right now, running fast does hurt. A lot. And it's not even that fast. Sure, it's fast for me, but since I'm not fast, my fast isn't really fast. But it still hurts.
The decision was made that I needed to get faster on the run. As much as I believe in doing a lot of LSD work as the optimum way to get faster, I only have a couple of months, so I need to speed the process along. (I need to get faster faster, I guess is what I'm trying to say.) The way to do that, is speedwork. With my other training loads, and since I'm shooting for a half-mary effort, the speedwork I need to do is not sprints, or even VO2max work. No, nothing short and over in just a couple of minutes. I need to do long threshold efforts, Daniels' T-pace, where the breathing is laboured and the finish is nowhere in sight. Doesn't that sound like fun?
(If you know me, you'll know the answer is, "Yes".)
So I put the hurt on myself tonight. On the treadmill to avoid any slowdown, I knocked out 7 miles, with 4 at T-pace (8.8mph). That's around 27:20 of deep breathing exercises. It wasn't the worst thing I've ever done to myself, and I'll be lengthening the interval over the next months. The pace is about 15sec/mile (10sec/km) faster than my goal at Muskoka. It was definitely an effort to keep my pace up, but I ended the session knowing I could that up for at least another mile or two, probably longer. Remember, the goal is to always do the minimum amount of work for the desired benefit. This was hard, but not a killer, and should be enough to start setting on a good path for September 14.
Run: 2 miles @ 7.5 mph, 4 miles @ 8.8 mph, 1 mile @ 7.5 mph + 4 strides
No comments:
Post a Comment