Wednesday, April 11, 2012

12K fartlek on tired legs

The title pretty much sums this one up. My legs felt sore last night, but were OK by this morning. Still, it was clear by a few km into the workout that it was just going to be a struggle to finish this one well. That's really not surprising given that I did 7km of intervals on Monday and 15K pretty fast yesterday, plus biking to work Monday & Tuesday. Oh yeah, and I was up until 11:30 pm for work and then had to get to the track by 6:15 am to do the workout before taking the kids to school. So, considering all of that, it went pretty well I guess.

It would have been nicer to have the cross-training day today that my coach originally scheduled, and do this workout tomorrow. However, a big storm is due to arrive and they say that the wind gusts tomorrow morning could be 45mph, so a track workout might not be so good then. More rest would have been nice, but I suppose that if I could get through this one OK on tired legs, then I'm doing all right.

I got up a tad later than I wanted after being up late for work, and so I had to rush my warm-up a bit. I did 1200m instead of the usual 1600, though I did do my dynamic stretching. I felt good and reasonably fast on the warm-up, and did some strides during the last lap.

I started the 12K fartlek, and the first km (fast) felt good, at 2:40 and 2:46 for the 500s for 5:26 for the km. I wanted to be a little conservative on that first km, and I felt that I was. However, on the medium 500 following it, I felt a bit stiff and ungainly, and was a bit slowish in 2:59. I pulled out a nice fast 2:44 for my next fast one, but then I just didn't feel so great on the 3rd km and that's when I knew it was going to be a long slog of a workout. I thought "at least I'm 1/4 done" and kept going, though I will admit the thought of quitting did cross my mind. I told myself that champions don't quit, and pushed on.

I slowed down just a little after that, and it helped. I knew I'd have to in order to complete the workout. I still got to 5K pretty quickly - in 28:54, faster than when I was in New York City. But I paid for that. The second 5K was 29:53, and the last 2K was 12:07. Ouch.

Total time: 1:10:53 and average HR 159.

Edited to add: Garmin data here.

Well, at least it's done.

1 comment:

Nyle said...

Well done for pushing yourself and finishing!
It is hard to get yourself past that point when you feel like quiting. You were still fast out there, especially looking back at what you had done this week.
Keep it up I am loving following along again and seeing you getting faster and faster! :)