With legs now safely on dry land it was back to the club for some speed work. One of my favourite sessions. 1km reps.
None of the fast group down tonight but a mixture of Joe, Irish Chris and fatigue made sure that this was still a hard session.
5 minute turnaround for each of them.
There is always confusion when the schedule has long reps advertised. Some coaches have long reps as 400m and some as miles. Being in the middle of marathon/ultra training I would say that long reps would be a mile or more. In the end it was 1 km which is ultra long for coach Stevie who spends his time on a track. Luckily for my group I wasn't taking the session. My plan was for mile reps in Knightswood.
We have a great 1km session just along from Garscube and far better than the winter warm up circuit that Debbie's group ended up with.
Alex was the only one from the fast group there today. I was hoping that Ali would be there as he leaves to live in Arizona next week and I wont be at the club on Thursday so it would have been good to say my byes.
The reps were tough tonight with my legs still feeling heavy from Sunday and my calf muscle doing funny spasms during the warm up. It was 6 * 1km reps with a 5 minute turnaround. I was doing the reps on average in 3 mins 20 secs so 1 min 40 recovery felt okay. Good session, felt pleased with my times and the calf didn't bother me at all.
3.21, 3.17, 3.17, 3.20, 3.25, 3.21
5.3 miles total including warm-up/cool-down
Debbie and I are away to see a talk on the Everest Marathon by Angela Budge tonight and so we decided to do our normal Tuesday session at lunchtime. It was back to our normal Kelvingrove 600m session which we haven't done since at least December. I was still feeling a bit rubbish after the half on Sunday so I really wanted to take it easy. Debbie warned me not to go off at my normal pace but to be honest it was me trying to hang on to her pace as we warmed up. During the warm up I spied Lindsay Cunningham and Scott Kennedy doing a speed session and for a moment my competitive side gave me a bit of energy and I thought about joining them. But that faded pretty quick as all I could muster was a "Hello".
Onto the session and I decided to change it to 400m with a 200m downhill recovery. I just did the six of them and then hung onto Debbie for the run back to work. Felt better for doing them but knew that it wasn't a 100% effort.
The Angela Mudge talk was excellent and I think that she may have done some of the hard work in trying to talk Debbie around to doing it some time. I felt very cold and shivery during the talk and so I must be run-down. I was glad to get into the warm car, home and to my bed.
Tonight's session was billed as short reps so I was ready for nice quick 50m sprints with my light weight training shoes. The session ended up as 450m reps in the Science Park at Acre Road. I swear that last time we did this session it was billed as medium reps. Oh well. After last nights mile reps session I was prepared to just take it easy tonight and Lesley's announcement to say that anyone running the half this weekend should take it easy put a seal of approval to my thoughts. The session was 12 x 450m reps with a two minute turnaround. My quickest was 1min 16s and slowest 1min 23s. So I was getting on average about 40s recovery between each which felt comfortable. Some of the slower members of the group must have been lucky to be getting 30s recovery so it must have been a tough session for them. Enjoyed tonight but quads still felt heavy from the Deerstalker and mile reps from the night before.
Got home to Celtic losing 1-0 to Barca. Out of the champions league 4-2 on aggregate. :-(
Back to the dreaded mile reps tonight. My quads are still on fire from the Deerstalkers on Saturday and the attempt to try to stay upright in road shoes. Debbie and I actually sat in the car longer before starting than the session lasted.
The reps were all slower than the last time I did them but I managed 5 of them and cut the recovery to 2 minutes. I think that for half marathons and above that it is a better session to go that bit slower and try to increase the amount.
Felt good when I finished and felt like it wouldn't take much to increase the amount.
The splits were: 5:12, 5:18, 5:19, 5:14, 5:16
Just wanted to add to my blog... congratulations to Pacepusher and Brian Mc for breaking their half marathon PB's at the weekend. I just hope that I can follow suit this weekend.
After my two days rest I checked my heart rate to make sure I was fully recovered. My resting heart-rate is now 36 beats per minute. I have always had a very low (bradycardic) heart rate but 36 is even a new low for me. I took a look at the internet and found that the only people with lower heart rates are Kenyans and bodies in the morgue. They also advice to go straight to the hospital and do not pick up £200 for passing go. Don't believe everything you read on the internet.... I feel fine... Anyway I thought I would ask everyone who reads this to post their resting heart rate to get an idea of what everyone is. Wait until you wake up in the morning and without getting up take your pulse for a full minute. Do the full minute cause it is more accurate. Then post to here as a comment.
I have also added the Clustrmaps application to my Blog (on the right) which tells me what location people are from that visit the blog. So hi to the American, Australian and someone from Central Europe. Perhaps they visited by accident, oops. I also have a few visits from the UK but I think I know who most of you are. Post a comment, say hi or post your resting heart rate. Thank you. Okay on to the training then.
So after the weekends lovely run it was back to normal club training. Tonight was long reps and it is more often than not around the winter warm up track. On a plus side none of the fast guys were there tonight. The first time around the 800m (0.51m) route felt quite easy but then Stephen M turned up and that meant that the rest would be faster. All of them were with a 1 minute recovery.
2:51, 2:45, 2:41, 2:41, 2:42, 2:45, 2:40
Back to the club today for some speedwork. Today was down as a Timed effort. The last time I came to this session I wore my racing shoes thinking that it was a time trial. It's not. The speed work is just done according to a certain time rather than distance. Anyway this time I would use my new light weight trainers.
Coach Lesley had asked me to take the group out tonight so the session was up to me. I decided that I would try to make it a harder session so opted to go for pyramids. The format for this is fast sessions of 2,3,4,5,4,3,2 minutes with a minute and a half recovery between them. I also chose a harder route as well that went from Garscube, along to Milngavie Rd to Milngavie then towards Baljafary before heading on the Stockie past the ski club and then Drymen Road and home again. The route is just short of 7.5 miles.
We started the speed stuff at Boclair Rd and I felt great. Nice and light in my new shoes. By the second 4 minute one though I was starting to fade and could feel Stephen Mulrine behind me before the inevitable happened and he over took me. He killed me in the last two as well. Two new guys joined us tonight. Andrew had a good run and managed to keep up with us but Chris started to struggle towards the end. It reminded me of when I made the jump from the pack below. There is such a difference in speed/pace/competitivness that it is a real struggle but if you keep at it you really start to stay with them and it feels great. If Chris and Andrew stay with us they will too. Alistair Morrison finished the group. Miles ahead as usual and hardly breaking a sweat. I wonder what has happened to Alex. Alex if you read this post a comment and tell me how you are doing.
A track speed session in Kelvin Hall. After a 15 minute warm up (yes 15 mins around a 200m track is a long time) it was on to the session. Three sets of 4 * 400m. With a 1 lap recovery every 400m and two laps recovery between each set.
It was a tough session but running on the track is tough and I always find it way too warm. Might just leave track sessions to bad weather days. I missed the wind in my face . No idea of times as I didn't wear a watch.
Back to Knightswood for the mile reps session. This time Paul joined Debbie and me.
Between reps I had a bigger rest than last time so was able to go around faster. I was wondering whether the rest time that I was doing before was perhaps too short. Anyway I got a new record lap of 5:04. Paul did well for his first time on this session and even managed 4 of them.
I always find Fartlek a bit easier than a normal Tuesday Speed session and a bit of a cop out as you can really tailor the session to how you feel. Tonight was no exception but was still a very good fun run. The group was quite big and with Ali not appearing, Alex still not looking back to full fitness and Stephen not making it, I was the fastest runner. Today's fartlek had everyone having a shot of picking the pace and the distance or time of the hard run. Although this would normally make it easier for me there is still a few of the slower runners that can go at quite a fast pace on the shorter distances and so it was a good beneficial session for me. The cold is definitely affecting my legs. They felt stiff at about the 3/4 mark even although I felt warm enough. I really need to bite the bullet and buy a pair of running tights. OMG!
(including warm up/down)Back to the granite stairs at Kelvingrove Park for tonight's session. Looks like we are going to do this session once every 2 weeks with the mile reps on the alternate ones. I spent all day trying to get out of it and even going as far as saying to Debbie that we could go out tomorrow morning. I felt a bit rough from last nights activities and felt like I had raced a half-marathon the day before rather than a 3 1/4 mi. Santa race.
Luckily this isn't a bad session to do on a Monday night and the idea is that we are trying to get some more speed into our legs.
Felt great after this session of 12. A little slower than normal but Averaging on 34 seconds up and down. Thought that I would include a picture this time as I have never seen it in daylight before.
