Thursday, October 11, 2012

Back on (a) track

I somehow thought that 1h15min running last week and my eating habits in the last three weeks (still have not used a stove, but I have already had almost everything I wanted including muffins, cheesecake and starbursts, and I will go to Olive Garden this weekend and stuff my face with their breadsticks and then I should be ok and can start eating real food) would have a very negative impact on my running fitness therefore my expectations for today's workout were quite low. Not sure why I expected it to be so bad though, you do not loose fitness in one week. Probably also because my last interval workout was when I was still in Germany so I was not really sure what to expect.

But it has turned out that it is not that bad.
Workout was 20min warm up, stretches/drills, 17min sub-tempo at 4:18 pace (6:53 since we are in the US after all), 3min rest, 5x800 @ 5k pace with 90sec jog, 10min c/d.
I realized soon during that sub-tempo (which I did on a trail near the track, which is great!) that I do feel good and there is nothing to worry about. Except that I might die during those 800s. The last time I did this tempo/intervals combo was last year in summer (when I was in a great shape by the way but was not able to capitalize on it in races since my ITB kept flaring up every few weeks).
So sub-tempo was good and my original plan was 4x800s at around 3:05, which is around 19:15 for a 5k.
However turns out that 800s are so short that 3:05 is too easy and 4 is not enough. So I did 5 in 3:05, 3:04, 3:03, 3:01, 2:59.
Sure, I used to do this workout all 800s in 2:5x but that would not be my 5k pace right not. So I followed instructions and kept it at a reasonable pace.
It felt quite easy although the last 150m of the last two was little harder. But that's probalby because I was going faster to negative split the intervals.

Then swim. Another great thing about the pool (one great thing is that I am always the only one swimming there) is that they have hot tub with jets so I used those to "massage" my legs between run and swim. It was great!
Swim was good as well and hit all my paces right on spot. Did 10x100 @ 1:40 again but this time at the end of a workout and went faster than last week. So I am adjusting.

Ok, I am off to bed since I need to get up at around 3:30am to drive for 9 hours to Michigan to pick up my cloths and do that mountain bike race on Saturday. It is either 6h or 8h race. I do not even know. And it does not really matter since I am not ready for neither of them. But I do not care, I can fake it. And I do not have a bike yet. Details, details.

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