A.M. In my latest experiments with my Android form coach I began to wonder if perhaps the increased lateral acceleration component was inevitable when running fast because I had a hard time running sub-4:50 pace without making it signal that the acceleration vector was too far out of the correct plane. So today I decided to see what would happen in the 3 mile tempo run. I decided to not worry about the pace, and just do whatever it would take to not make the trigger go off. The tempo run actually surprised me. Based on what I was seeing in the quarters, I was expecting that I would be lucky to run 17:15 this way. I actually ended up with 16:45 with the splits of 5:36 - 5:35 - 5:34. At first the pace felt easy but I could not go any faster without the alarm going off. Then I realized something - I have tested the threshold setting while standing, and it allows quite a bit of freedom for the arms to move sideways. Thus, it is not the lateral arm swing that triggers the alarm, but probably the hip rotation. So instead of worrying about the arms, I focused on keeping the hips straight, and was able to speed up without the alarm. The entire tempo run felt much easier than the ones before, and I felt strong all the way to the end. Later in the run I did 2x400 - 74.2 rolling and 72.7 down. Benjamin ran the last one with me. Again, the focus was not speed, but to keep the alarm silent.
Those results make me suspect that the reason I have a hard time maintaining the pace is that somehow I learned to associate running faster with rotating my hips harder, which is sustainable for a short distance, but eventually is not sustainable. Regardless, I was happy that my Android experiments produced some form of a positive result.
The total distance was 13.5 miles.
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