This is the first in a hopefully-weekly segment covering the different workouts I'm doing as part of my race preparation. Before I get too far involved, I should mention my basic philosophy on workouts: no one workout is going to make your season; however, one overdone workout can ruin it. The key is to keep everything within a certain level of moderation (as Arthur Lydiard put it, "Train, don't strain") so that each successive workout builds on the previous one. A successful program of workouts should fit together like pieces of a puzzle, building the race you want to run when you want to run it. That said, I thought it'd be cool to give you an idea of the type of work I'm doing, the rationale behind it, and how it all fits together over the course of a season.
WHAT'S THE WORKOUT?
4 x 2 Mile at around my lactate threshold (aka, tempo) pace on a bike path. Negative split the intervals as follows: #1 - 10:05-10:10; #2 - 10:00-10:05; #3 - 9:55-10:00; #4 - 9:50-9:55.
WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?
As I have a half marathon coming up (Indy Monumental on Nov. 1...two weeks!), this will be the closest I get to a half marathon simulation session. I've been coming off of mostly base training for the past few months, so I have a very good level of aerobic fitness; now, I just need to translate that into faster fitness. The goal for this workout is to get my body used to running right around the effort where lactic acid is starting to build up in the muscles. By running for an extended period of time at that lactate threshold, I'm effectively training the body to be more efficient at clearing lactate, so that come race day I can sustain this pace for longer and longer distances. (Lactate threshold generally corresponds to somewhere between 15k and half marathon pace.) By negative splitting the workout, I should be practicing two things: 1) reinforcing good race strategy (I have a bad habit of going out too hard), and 2) easing into a lactic acid clearing state, instead of flooding the system too much to be able to clear it by going out too hard.
WHERE DID YOU DO IT?
Otto Armleder Park, which features a 1.9-mile paved loop with markers every .2 miles.
HOW DID IT GO?
It went pretty well, but of course I started out too fast on the first one. Splits: 10:03, 9:58, 9:55, 9:51. So I hit every one at or below the goal, but the better news is that I negative split the workout...which was the whole point. To add to that, I negative split each interval, so that my second mile was always faster than my first. That's the thing I think was most successful for this workout. Every interval felt relaxed and under control, which they should -- lactate threshold pace should just be cruising, not pressing too much. I only felt like I was pushing on the last mile of the last interval, but that's partly because I was running that one into the wind (plus I wanted to finish it strong). Anyway, I think this was a successful workout, and I can definitely say I gained a lot of confidence from it. I've done this workout a few times before over the years, and this was easily the fastest and most comfortable I've ever felt doing it. Hopefully that's a good sign.
So that's it for the workout recap. Stay tuned each week for more!
WHAT'S THE WORKOUT?
4 x 2 Mile at around my lactate threshold (aka, tempo) pace on a bike path. Negative split the intervals as follows: #1 - 10:05-10:10; #2 - 10:00-10:05; #3 - 9:55-10:00; #4 - 9:50-9:55.
WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?
As I have a half marathon coming up (Indy Monumental on Nov. 1...two weeks!), this will be the closest I get to a half marathon simulation session. I've been coming off of mostly base training for the past few months, so I have a very good level of aerobic fitness; now, I just need to translate that into faster fitness. The goal for this workout is to get my body used to running right around the effort where lactic acid is starting to build up in the muscles. By running for an extended period of time at that lactate threshold, I'm effectively training the body to be more efficient at clearing lactate, so that come race day I can sustain this pace for longer and longer distances. (Lactate threshold generally corresponds to somewhere between 15k and half marathon pace.) By negative splitting the workout, I should be practicing two things: 1) reinforcing good race strategy (I have a bad habit of going out too hard), and 2) easing into a lactic acid clearing state, instead of flooding the system too much to be able to clear it by going out too hard.
WHERE DID YOU DO IT?
Otto Armleder Park, which features a 1.9-mile paved loop with markers every .2 miles.
HOW DID IT GO?
It went pretty well, but of course I started out too fast on the first one. Splits: 10:03, 9:58, 9:55, 9:51. So I hit every one at or below the goal, but the better news is that I negative split the workout...which was the whole point. To add to that, I negative split each interval, so that my second mile was always faster than my first. That's the thing I think was most successful for this workout. Every interval felt relaxed and under control, which they should -- lactate threshold pace should just be cruising, not pressing too much. I only felt like I was pushing on the last mile of the last interval, but that's partly because I was running that one into the wind (plus I wanted to finish it strong). Anyway, I think this was a successful workout, and I can definitely say I gained a lot of confidence from it. I've done this workout a few times before over the years, and this was easily the fastest and most comfortable I've ever felt doing it. Hopefully that's a good sign.
So that's it for the workout recap. Stay tuned each week for more!
Nice effort
ReplyDeleteNice effort
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