from Diary of a rubbish Marathon Runner Is it really 2 weeks since my last evaluation? Time flies! At that rate, my next marathon will be around the corner before I can say “lactate threshold”.
I was surprisingly sore on Monday. I thought the double stress of a race (albeit at sub-max effort) on Saturday and 15 hilly miles on Sunday were to blame, but the coach attributes it mainly to not being recovered from Dublin yet. Obviously I took it easy on Monday; having said that, I felt much better once I was moving, the run went rather well and my heart rate continues to drop for comparable paces. There might have been a small residue of soreness noticeable on Tuesday morning but I went ahead with the evaluation anyway. After all the grief you guys gave me last time I decided to change the venue and ran back-and forwards on a reasonably flat half-mile stretch of road. The flat part turned out to be a tad less than half a mile, so the 4-mile evaluation needed 8 u-turns rather than the planned 7, but that was hardly much of an issue. The point was, all 4 miles had the same conditions. The bar numbers are much better than on the previous 2 occasions, with the last mile “only” 18 seconds slower than the first one rather than almost a minute like 12 days ago. The recovery time to 130 was also significantly reduced, though I changed my method of measuring it: rather than frantically pressing buttons on my Garmin I used a second stopwatch, brought along specifically to measure the recovery time, so maybe the there’s a second difference due to the different measurement method. Anyway, I’m much happier with these figures: 6:44 (HR 161) 6:57 (HR 161) 6:59 (HR 161) 7:02 (HR 160); 38 seconds to HR 130 After finishing the evaluation I did another 5.5 miles at what seemed like fairly leisurely pace. I didn’t check my Garmin again until I was almost back home, by which time I realised that I had run just under 7:30 pace for that section without even knowing. After 4 miles of evaluation, 7:30 felt like jogging slowly. Those evaluation workouts are fun. It’s the only time in training that I’m allowed to stretch the legs a bit and I’m actually looking forward to them each time. As far as workouts go, they are fairly easy. I could keep that effort for much, much longer; they are not stressful, just fun. On a completely unrelated note, I let my inner geek run riot and just finished this after one week of work. The ground and tower took one evening. The sky took 6. It’s another form of endurance workout. And once it was done, I broke it up and put it back into the box. Just like marathons, the journey is the destination. And just like marathons, you can only do so many 1000 piece jigsaws in a year. 15 Nov 8 miles, 1:03:44, 7:58 pace, HR 140 16 Nov 12 miles, 1:27:54, 7:18 pace, HR 152 incl. 4 miles evaluation: 6:44, 6:57, 6:59, 7:02; 38 seconds to HR 130 https://rubbishrunner.blogspot.com/
I was surprisingly sore on Monday. I thought the double stress of a race (albeit at sub-max effort) on Saturday and 15 hilly miles on Sunday were to blame, but the coach attributes it mainly to not being recovered from Dublin yet. Obviously I took it easy on Monday; having said that, I felt much better once I was moving, the run went rather well and my heart rate continues to drop for comparable paces. There might have been a small residue of soreness noticeable on Tuesday morning but I went ahead with the evaluation anyway. After all the grief you guys gave me last time I decided to change the venue and ran back-and forwards on a reasonably flat half-mile stretch of road. The flat part turned out to be a tad less than half a mile, so the 4-mile evaluation needed 8 u-turns rather than the planned 7, but that was hardly much of an issue. The point was, all 4 miles had the same conditions. The bar numbers are much better than on the previous 2 occasions, with the last mile “only” 18 seconds slower than the first one rather than almost a minute like 12 days ago. The recovery time to 130 was also significantly reduced, though I changed my method of measuring it: rather than frantically pressing buttons on my Garmin I used a second stopwatch, brought along specifically to measure the recovery time, so maybe the there’s a second difference due to the different measurement method. Anyway, I’m much happier with these figures: 6:44 (HR 161) 6:57 (HR 161) 6:59 (HR 161) 7:02 (HR 160); 38 seconds to HR 130 After finishing the evaluation I did another 5.5 miles at what seemed like fairly leisurely pace. I didn’t check my Garmin again until I was almost back home, by which time I realised that I had run just under 7:30 pace for that section without even knowing. After 4 miles of evaluation, 7:30 felt like jogging slowly. Those evaluation workouts are fun. It’s the only time in training that I’m allowed to stretch the legs a bit and I’m actually looking forward to them each time. As far as workouts go, they are fairly easy. I could keep that effort for much, much longer; they are not stressful, just fun. On a completely unrelated note, I let my inner geek run riot and just finished this after one week of work. The ground and tower took one evening. The sky took 6. It’s another form of endurance workout. And once it was done, I broke it up and put it back into the box. Just like marathons, the journey is the destination. And just like marathons, you can only do so many 1000 piece jigsaws in a year. 15 Nov 8 miles, 1:03:44, 7:58 pace, HR 140 16 Nov 12 miles, 1:27:54, 7:18 pace, HR 152 incl. 4 miles evaluation: 6:44, 6:57, 6:59, 7:02; 38 seconds to HR 130 https://rubbishrunner.blogspot.com/
