Friday, August 08, 2008

A too fast start...

For the remainder of this training program until the Toronto waterfront marathon, I'm going to make a point of hitting all my quality work. I've fit just about all the mileage, but I've missed a track session, and have not been doing the striders like I should. I was finding the ramping up in mileage was making me very tired on recovery days (typically that's with they throw in the 8x100).

But now I'm going to make a point of hitting them all. I have five track sessions, two 5x600s, 6x1000, 6x1200 and 3x1600. I have eight more sessions with striders. I have one more pace run of 14 miles but the week before that, I have a 30K (18.7 mile) race that i'll do at marathon pace. In a lot of ways, that run will be a key to this entire training cycle.

Today was my last lactate threshold run. I calculated that my pace should be around 6:57 miles or 4:19 kilometres.

All I can say about the first mile was WTF?! I knew I was going too fast but I couldn't really find my pace so I was a little worried to see I did it in 6:28. The next two miles, I was slowing, trying to feel a little more comfortable (funny, cause it's supposed to be comfortably hard). My worry at this point was that I went so fast that I'd burn out. Luckily, mile 4 at 7:02 was my slowest and I was able to do the last 3 miles in 6:54, 7:00 and 6:53.

So not encouraging that I couldn't find my pace but very encouraging that I didn't burn out. I hope I got enough of a training benefit from the run.

Been keeping up with the schedule: 15 miles on Wednesday and a day off yesterday. Tomorrow, it's 5 recovery miles followed by - gulp - a 22 miler on Sunday. I'm pretty sure i'll find the proper pace.

3 comments:

Sonia said...

Wow 22 miler... you're a running machine! Hope it goes well on Sunday..
I am so jealous BTW, I wish stoopid injuries would leave me alone now!

Arcane said...

I've always thought that you were doing your LT runs a bit slow. 6:50-6:55 was about my limit which causes me problems when trying to race shorter distance since I can't seem to do the LT's much faster. You seem to be able to handle the shorter distances just find which leads me to believe your LT's should probably be around 6:45 pace or so.

yumke said...

Thanks guys,
Fran, i think you're probably right there.. next LT, if I do one this training cycle, i'll up the pace a bit if I can hold it..