On my current training plan, FIRST's "3plus2", see my previous post, Tuesdays are speedwork days. These are no ordinary speedwork sessions, not for a hobbyist like me at least, these are intense, pushing my mental and physical boundaries and designed to promote the necessary physiological changes in my body to improve performance. In short, they hurt.
I'd experienced doing 800m reps at a track before, they also hurt, but these were elongated reps at a similar pace, namely the following:
- 1k, 2k, 1k, 1k, with 400m walk/jog recovery intervals in between
The pace for each is calculated based on your current 5k race form. I plugged in 20 minutes for that and ended up having to run the 1k stretches at 3:40/km pace and the 2k at 3:50/km. Some simple maths tells you that means finishing 5k in 18:40, with the benefit of interspersed 2-3 minute breathers. It felt pretty tough.
I swam on Wednesday, for 1 of my 2 cross-training sessions and Thurday required me to perform a mid-tempo run, translating to a 1 mile warm up, followed by 5 miles at sub-7 min/mile pace. Again, this felt right up there in terms of effort.
Saturday was a monster 20 mile session, I threw in a couple of hills too, for good measure. I ran with a couple of friends, also taking part in the Berlin marathon, and we took off at a steady 9:30/mile pace and thank goodness we did. The first 12 miles felt very comfortable, then the wheels started to fall off, so to speak.
Mile 16 was probably the point at which I really could have done with stopping, the point at which mind has to take over matter, or you've had it. The addition of a steep-ish hill at 17 miles just made this worse.
By this point, we were two, neither of us really feeling like holding conversation. It was all we could do to to focus every ounce of energy into keeping the mind focused and the legs turning. 17.5 miles in, the hills, the steep ones at least, were behind us and we admitted to one another that we felt beaten. But, of course, we weren't, at least our legs were still moving, sort of, so the feeling was purely mental and could be beaten. I motioned that we'd best get used to it as there wouldn't be any let up over 26.2 miles on the day. Anyone who's run the distance before will know what I mean when by the dark miles from 19-23.
We pushed on, every 100yds a tacitly acknowledged milestone, until we reached mile 19 and were lifted by the thought of only 1 mile to go. It's strange how your body does that, it obviously holds something back and then when it knows you're ok and can finish, the reserves flood in and you lift yourself to the finish.
A solid run, nothing too pacey, but anything quicker probably would have broken us. The hills will have probably burnt the energy of another mile or two on the flat, which is always something to draw on for the event.
Bring on Berlin!
Week commencing Sunday 15th August
Total exercise: 5h 35m
Longest run: 20 miles (3:07)
Distance covered: 53km
- 50km running
- 3km swimming
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