My Get Up & Go Got Up and Went.

TRAINING REPORT:

Needing to get back on the horse after a pretty lazy week last week, I saddled up the treadmill for a 3 x 1600 interval run (for all you non-metric cretins, 1600m is basically two first-downs short of a mile).  My target pace was 9.4 to 9.6 MPH or about 6:10 - 6:20 per mile.  I did a brisk walk (4 MPH) for 400m and stepped off to do some active stretching before jumping back on to start the workout.

After using the first 400m to walk, then jog my way up to a steady running pace, I punched the "go-time" buttom to kick the speed up to Ludicrous Speed.  The first 1600 felt okay, but my legs weren't feeling as strong as they typically do at the beginning of an interval workout.  For the longer intervals, I do a longer recovery period, so I brisk-walked 400m after that interval before starting the next one.

With the second interval, I was having some trouble finding a good cadence at 9.6, so I backed it down to 9.4MPH.  That helped at least alleviate the feeling that I was going be ejected from the ride, but by around 600m it was evident that the full distance wasn't likely to happen at the prescribed pace, so I cut off the second interval at 1200m and brought the pace back down to 4MPH.

As I started the final interval, I was feeling gassed, my glutes were getting crampy (which never happens) and my shoes/feet were starting to bug me... again.  I ended up running the last interval at 9.0 MPH for 1200m before going in to cool-down.

When I looked at this workout on paper, I really didn't expect this much of a challenge.  I'm not sure what the weak link ended up being for this workout.  My long-run on Sunday was short (relatively), my Monday workout wasn't overly strenuous, my diet was pretty strong.  I did forget my iPod, so I didn't have music and, while I'm sure that was a bit of a hindrance, I can't chalk this performance up to an absence of Tool.  

My overall physical strength has felt diminished as of late and, while I'm sure a bit comes from a few light weeks of training, I know that's not what's behind it.  Maybe it's just this long, hard winter finally catching up a little bit.  I'm definitely looking forward to being able to have some outdoor runs without having to worry about ice, snow, and layering.

2011-MAR-08 Diet Log

(no iPod, no run graph)