Tuesday, July 28, 2009

still slow

I wonder how long I will be slow after donating blood? Best guess is 3-6 weeks. I expect that things will start to improve gradually.

Today was the slowest track workout I've had in a LONG long time. I was doing ladders and it was UGLY. My HR was really high despite a relatively slow speed, my legs felt SO heavy, and I toyed with quitting. But I figured that training was training, and slow or not, I would get benefits from it. I was feeling pretty good before I started, because my rest day yesterday really restored my strength. So, I think it was the right thing to do. Hard to know.

Here were my times --- don't laugh, OK?
I did an easy 200m in between each fast interval.
First 200m - forgot to push the timer so don't know the time.
400m - 2:10 (the only decent interval time of the day).
600m - 3:25
800m - 4:49 (usually I do 800s in 4:30-4:35 for Yasso repeats, so this shows how slow I was!)
1000m - 6:05 (um, yeah, this was bad too)
800m - 4:47
600m - 3:35 (wow... really bad)
400m - 2:20 (that's not bad given how tired I was, I guess)
200m - 1:04 (gave this one everything I had left)

I'm happy with this, given how I felt. Hey, it beats the alternative - being injured or not being able to work out for some reason. And it was still good training.

My chafing under my R arm from Sunday is still hurting, but it's a lot better than it was. Liberal application of Body Glide before this workout kept it from getting any worse, thankfully. It was a bit cooler this morning, too, and there was a breeze, which helped a lot.

Tomorrow a little easy cross-training is planned for some recovery - a bike ride to my weight training class.

2 comments:

Harriet said...

Just a suggestion from the peanut gallery: you might do 200s and focus on technique and raw speed; my guess is that your performances in these won't be much affected.

Nyle said...

Just a thought...dont forget that we all plateau and have down days. But the good news is, once you work through those and listen to your body, you will come back quicker and stronger. Giving blood really knocks you and it takes me a good two weeks to be back on form again. I am B+ so get called in often as its an uncommon type. The main thing is...you were still out there and every walk is money in the bank. You will make gains even if you dont see them at first.