Monday, July 22, 2013

London calling

After a day off on Monday I managed to extend my intervals to a mile each at 17.5 kph (I'm trying to get into the mentality of runing a 26.2 mile Marathon in New York, rather than a 42.2 kilometer one...). This time I planned ahead and brought a spare pair of shoes for when the first pair became all sweaty and slippery. Unfortunately, I killed another treadmill in the process - this time one of the ones in the gym at work - which resolutely refused to continue, forcing me to move to another one. By the last set of the 6 intervals, I found I had to knock a smidgeon off the pace because I was beginning to gasp for air after only 500 meters or so. While I think I could have finished the workout at the designated pace, I'm not sure how much additional beneift it would have given me and it would have felt like a competition level effort. After all, when I had a coach, he never had me train at maximal effort, only at above my anaerobic threshold.

I was in London on Wednesday and England was enjoying a bit of a heatwave. Since moving to Madrid, I've become very conscious of just how humid it is in London. Also, for logistic reasons (like being dressed in a suit and having my suitcase with me), I decided to get a day pass for a gym near my London office. The good thing was that the machines were exactly the same ones we have in the work gym in Madrid but the bad news was that it was even hotter in this gym than I am used to. I was also a little bit stiff from my interval session the day before so I only ran for 30 minutes at my "Marathon pace" of 4:00/km (15 kph) before running the remaining 10 minutes at an easier pace which would hopefully help me recover for the next day.

The new console for my "deadmill" arrived on Thursday so I was excited to get back to training in my basement. It was a little bit fiddly to change but I did it with no problem other than the machine wouldn't turn on at all. After a few calls to the very helpful service department (as well as a bit of cussing and swearing, if I am honest) I realized that there had to be a simple solution. In effect, there was: the switch was in the "on" position (I'm not that stupid) but it just needed pressing in a bit more. In fact, this seems to be the cause of the machine reseting itself mid-run every now and again. A judiciously placed blob of Blutack has done the trick.

The rest of the week I rather boringly repeated the same workout as many times as I could. It is not the most efficient way to train but my objective at the moment is to get as used to Marathon pace runing as possible while doing relatively short and relatively intense workouts. Hopefully mentally as well as biomechanically, running at 15 kph is becoming a bit of a doddle.

Monday: -
Tuesday: 6 x 1,600 m @ 3:25/km (last one at 3:30/km)
Wednesday: 30' @ 4:00 + 10' @ 4:30 (London)
Thursday: 40' @ 4:00
Friday: 40' @ 4:00
Saturday: 40' @ 4:00 (morning), 20' @ 4:00 (afternoon)
Sunday: 40' @ 4:00 (morning), 40' @ 4:00 (afternoon)

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