Friday, April 27, 2012

6K easy (Thursday); 12K fartlek - new PR! (Friday)

I was too busy to post yesterday. Or too tired. Or something.

Yesterday I did an easy 6K; actually 6.25K since I went around Liberty Park. I felt great for the first 3K, and then I felt tired and sluggish. I think I'm still recovering from the hard half marathon and from the track workout on Monday.

The weather was pretty nice - it had threatened to be windy, but the wind waited until later in the day, thankfully. It was about 58F (14C) and calm. Still unseasonably warm, but I'm not complaining one bit!

I did the route in 37:59, which I believe is the fastest I've done it on an easy day. My average was 6:05/km for the 6.25km, with average heart rate of 143.

Garmin data here.

***

Today's workout was a 12K fartlek, which is always a hard one. I thought the weather might keep me from this today, as it was supposed to be pouring rain and really windy. Well, I got lucky. It poured rain most of the night but dried up before my workout. The cold front came in, so it was colder than it has been, but seasonably chilly at 43F (about 6C). It was windy last night, and is VERY windy now - in the afternoon - but it was just a little breezy for my workout and no problem.

I warmed up well, doing 1600m with two 100m strides in 9:28. I felt good, and did some dynamic stretching. I was feeling optimistic and figured today would be a good, fast workout.

I felt great to start, doing the first 1km in 5:22 (2:40+2:42). I continued fast, doing the medium 500s in 2:55 and the fast 500s in 2:45 until the 4th km, when all of a sudden it felt like I was racewalking through mud. Seriously. My quads felt SO tired, and the only way I can explain this is that they weren't fully recovered from the 5x800/200 on Monday and the hard half marathon on Saturday. It was hard to keep going and I started to wonder how this one was going to turn out. I managed ~3:00 and 2:51 for the next 2K, and then I adjusted to the tired feeling a bit. It's not that my legs felt better, but more that I got used to it? The rest of the fast 500s were 2:48-2:50 to the end of the workout, and the medium 500s were 3:02-3:04. That's a lot better than I thought I'd be able to do, considering how my legs felt. I realized I was going to PR the workout, and I was happy about that, but a little disappointed as I knew I could do this one faster if I'd felt better. You could argue that I started out too fast, but I think I started out at a reasonable speed given my conditioning; I just had tired legs today and couldn't hold it on this particular day.

Total time: 1:09:33 with average HR 161. I worked this one really hard and am proud that I kept going when I knew it was going to really hurt for 8km.

I know my coach is going to say this predicts good things for the 15K. I'm sure it does...but I'll tell you one thing - there was NO WAY I was going to do another 3K today at that pace. My legs were DONE! I think that is more a reflection of lack of complete recovery than my fitness, though, judging from the racewalking-through-mud feeling I had. Considering that I didn't feel stupendous, it's a good result.

Garmin data here.

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