A Lean and Hungry Look

Scheduled day off.

10x3-min intervals with 2 min rest between each at Liberty Park.  Goal was to maintain 5k pace of around 5:20/mile.  I pressed the wrong button on the Garmin after finishing my warmup and starting my first interval and ended up going 3:36 or so before catching the mistake.  I reset the Garmin after that and think the splits seem accurate.  Here they are:

1. 5:30 (guess)

2. 5:30 (172 bpm)

3. 5:22 (175)

4. 5:39 (176)

5. 5:32 (173)

6. 5:42 (174)

7. 5:52 (176)

8. 5:24 (175)

9. 5:57 (178)

10. 5:38 (175)

I looked down at my Garmin after about the 6th interval and thought, based on how I felt, that I must only have about 1 left.  The legs felt tired, the effort felt hard, and I just never really got into a zone.  Looking back on my numbers, I'm a little discouraged that I wasn't able to hold my target pace for even one interval.  I hope Thursday's tempo goes better.

AM: Easy 3 to work out some of the soreness from yesterday's intervals.  I'll plan to do another 3 tonight.

PM: Easy 3 with Brooke after the kids went to bed.

Plan was to do 10 with 8-mile tempo at HMP at Sugarhouse Park.  Started with a 2-mile easy warmup around the outer loop, then moved to the inner loop for the tempo portion.  Splits were as follows:

Mile 3: 5:55 (168 bpm) (one hill)

Mile 4: 6:05 (176) (two hills)

Mile 5: 5:59 (177) (one hill)

Mile 6: 6:22 (179) (two hills and the wheels are coming off)

Mile 7: 6:13 (178) (one hill and the wheels are completely off)

I only made it another 1/3 mile before calling it quits on the tempo.  My legs were burning, I felt anaerobic at the top of every hill, and there just wasn't anything else in the tank to hold tempo.  I finished out the 10 miles at an easy pace and tried to figure out what was wrong.  Here's what I came up with:

I've been getting adequate sleep at night and have been drinking a lot of water at work to stay hydrated.  One thing that may have factored into today's difficulties is the fact that this is my third all-out workout in 5 days (Sunday morning's 14-miler with 10 at MP, then Tuesday morning's intervals).  I think the problem runs a little deeper, though.

This was really only my second attempt to maintain tempo on anything other than downhill terrain, and I think it revealed the inadequacy of my base, which I've been able to mask by doing my tempo work running down Emigration.  I'm a pretty good downhill runner, so I've kind of been cheating myself by using downhill runs and counting them as true tempo.  I feel like I'm trying to build a 2:30 SGM on a base that would only support 3:00.  Compared to 3 years ago, when I last trained for a marathon, I feel like I'm lacking in the base mileage to recover properly from one hard workout to the next and to sustain a hard pace for more than a few miles on honest terrain.  I think it might make sense to reassess things and increase mileage for a month while pulling back on the frequency and duration of intense workouts, then try a workout like today's again to see whether the increased mileage has made a difference.  When I last trained using the kind of workouts I'm trying to do now, I had a solid base built over the course of the winter plus a dozen or more runs of 20+ miles (including 4 marathons) over the previous 6 months.  When I did tempo at Sugarhouse with that foundation underneath me, I was able to sustain a hard pace for 6 miles (I don't recall ever doing a longer tempo run there) with little trouble.  The focus then was on increasing turnover.  I feel like I have better speed now but a far lesser ability to sustain it.  Compared to those workouts, today's felt like a death march.

Easy 6 to Sugarhouse and back.  Had to leave at 5:00 so Brooke could make it out for her long run before I left for work.  Left shin pain for first 1/2 mile or so.  Iced it afterwards.  Need to remember to massage it before bed each night.

2x10k at target pace of 6:30-6:40/mile with warmup and cooldown.  Ran out along 20th East to 45th South, then down to 5th East, then up to and around Liberty Park, with cooldown back up the hill on 9th South (not the best cooldown, FYI).  Splits were as follows:

1st 10k (started at 21st South and 20th East and ended at 45th South and 5th East):

Mile 1: 6:32 (163 bpm) (ascent 516; descent 748)

Mile 2: 6:34 (167) (a 147; d 118)

Mile 3: 6:21 (170) (a 72; d 88)

Mile 4: 6:33 (168) (a 56; d 102)

Mile 5: 6:20 (164) (a 52; d 148)

Mile 6: 6:29 (165) (a 73; d 91)

Last 0.2: 6:53/mi (oops)

Total: 40:15

2nd 10k (started at 45th South and 5th East and ended with almost 1 lap at Liberty Park):

Mile 1: 6:32 (160) (a 680; d 681--that can't possibly be right)

Mile 2: 6:28 (168) (a 62; d 68)

Mile 3: 6:32 (168) (a 107; d 72)

Mile 4: 6:28 (174) (a 94; d 128)

Mile 5: 6:26 (173) (a 114; d 107)

Mile 6: 6:12 (177) (a 102; d 135)

Last 0.2: 6:20/mi (177)

Total: 39:55

The first couple of miles of the first 10k were harder than expected--they didn't really hurt, but I had expected it to feel relatively easy and it didn't.  It required focus to keep the pace, which felt solid but doable.  The last mile or so of the second 10k felt pretty hard.  The "cooldown" going up the 9th South hill from Liberty Park felt lousy, and I was pretty spent when I got home.  As I was stretching, I realized that because I cheated and slipped in Sunday morning's run into last week's mileage, my actual mileage for the past 7 days was just over 60, which is the highest mileage I've run in a week in over 3 years, and 4 of those days were hard workouts.  That, plus the fact that I didn't get out until after 7 this morning and it was warm and muggy, may explain the overall fatigue I'm feeling.  I'll take it easy the rest of the day and tomorrow.