Back in the saddle?

Shauna, sometimes you don't know your limits until you try to break them. A mile is a long way to suffer when you're dying from the start of the repeat. What was the purpose of this workout - to work on your lactate threshold, or to raise VO2max? What is 8:15 pace for you? If you wanted to work on LT, then 2-3 min. rest would be appropriate, but if 8:15 is close to your 5K pace (corresponds to VO2max training pace), then you should have taken much longer rest breaks, at least 6 min. So it could be that you simply ran yourself into the ground by not resting enough between first and second repeat.

Shauna I think this workout is more impressive than you think.

You didn't mention the temperature. I'm thinking it was probably pretty warmish and that may have affected your pacing significantly. Once it gets above 60 degrees the heat begins taking a toll. You get into the 80's and higher and pace is going to drop dramatically.

I wouldn't worry about this workout much and I'd stick with the plan but always look at factors like the heat that might require you to alter some aspects of the workout. I think if you would have given yourself another 15 seconds (8:30 or better as opposed to 8:15) you could have finished the 4th mile and not been so dead. Ideally with this type of workout the first couple of miles should feel hard but comfortably hard and the last two should be hard and uncomfortable toward the end but you should still feel like you have a little bit of gas left in the tank at the end.

On the other hand there are just some days when the body for whatever reason (sleep, diet, stress) will just refuse to cooperate and won't perform anywhere near potential. On these days (and the "Brain Training" even says it's OK to do) I've found for me it's best to just bag the workout, forget about it and know that if was a fluke that probably won't happen very often.

BTW I guess I meant to say "speed" is going to drop dramatically in the heat rather than "pace" which of course is going to increase.

I am going to echo Maria's questions Shauna ... especially since we have coaches that follow the same training plans! What was the purpose of this workout? My opinion is that you rarely get the type of training stimulus that I think you are trying to get when you run "all out" for a mile. The idea is to increase your LT and add stress to the system - but not so much stress that you can't finish the workout or can't run the next day because you ran too hard. You should always finish a track workout feeling you could do one more if you "needed" to (not that it would be easy, but you could do it). If you don't feel like that then you need to slow down or stop while you do feel that way (which you wisely did). Again, I agree with Maria, you could/should increase your recovery (especially when it is hot) - if you are doing mile repeats pretty fast then you might want to jog 800 meters before doing the next mile. This

would still give you the right amount of training stimulus.

I think 3 x 1 mile w/400 recovery is a really hard workout if you haven't ever done it before and you will do much better next time!

Bonnie

Thanks for the input, everyone. Tom, you're right, it was well over 80 degrees this morning. I didn't think of that until later, though, which probably means I'm acclimated somewhat(a good sign!).

Maria and Bonnie, 8:15 is about my 10k pace these days. According to the brain training plan, which I am following loosely, the purpose of this workout is to increase fatigue resistance at 10k pace. It doesn't mention LT or VO2 max, but I would guess that it's closer to VO2 max. After next week, these mile repeats will morph into tempo runs. I'll try longer rest periods next time. After what everyone said, I'm very surprised that the plan calls for only 2 minute recovery. It calls for 3 minute recoveries with 400s!

FYI a while back Lybi gave me this link to a Tinman website article that tells you what the typical effects of temperature are on pacing.

http://therunzone.com/HeatChart.html

Looks like from this you would have wanted to adjust your goal pace by 15 seconds or so to around 8:30. Personally I feel like mile repeats at true 10K pace with only 2-min rests should be reasonable since we're talking about a pace that we think we can currently hold for 6.2 miles straight in a race. But any faster than 10K pace and 2 minutes becomes too short in a hurry.

YOU ROCK!!! I am going to try for ONE mile with an 8 in the min spot and ANY old numbers in the sec for just ONE mile in a few weeks with Josse. You did 3. You are on my hero list!!!