It looks like I spotted my mistake (of training for the wrong distance) just in time as this is the week when I would have started to "sharpen" up the pace a little; instead, I should include some slightly longer runs. As Owen Andersen says in his "Running Science" book, the Half Marathon is only a third of the way between a 10K and a full Marathon, so 10K style training is more apt than Marathon style training for this distance. Here is my new tweaked training plan, with the changes (both in execution thus far and in what's to come) highlighted in italics:
I've also come to accept that my vVO2Max speed probably isn't 20 kph (3:00 per kilometre) in spite of the VO2Max test results from last year. The fact of the matter is, the protocol involved increasing the belt speed by one whole kph every minute so, if my true VO2Max were actually 19.25 kph, say, it might well have been recorded as 20 kph. If I go by the yardstick that Veronique Billat - the french sports scientist that came up with this vVO2Max trainging protocol in first place - it should correspond to my flat out race pace over 6 minutes; extrapolating from my race times, this would be around 19-19.25 kph, corresponding to a 5 minute mile. Put another way, if I were able to run 5 sets of 1 kilometre in 3 minutes, it would make a bit of a mockery of my other training paces. So I have decided to stop struggling to build up futher at this pace and to knock the pace down a bit instead. If Billat is right, then this will be more effective. Hopefully I'll also avoid that horrible feeling that I am drowning at the end of the longer sets: it has been getting to the point that it almost felt worse to stop than to keep going, because I just couldn't suck in air fast enough.
I've also come to accept that my vVO2Max speed probably isn't 20 kph (3:00 per kilometre) in spite of the VO2Max test results from last year. The fact of the matter is, the protocol involved increasing the belt speed by one whole kph every minute so, if my true VO2Max were actually 19.25 kph, say, it might well have been recorded as 20 kph. If I go by the yardstick that Veronique Billat - the french sports scientist that came up with this vVO2Max trainging protocol in first place - it should correspond to my flat out race pace over 6 minutes; extrapolating from my race times, this would be around 19-19.25 kph, corresponding to a 5 minute mile. Put another way, if I were able to run 5 sets of 1 kilometre in 3 minutes, it would make a bit of a mockery of my other training paces. So I have decided to stop struggling to build up futher at this pace and to knock the pace down a bit instead. If Billat is right, then this will be more effective. Hopefully I'll also avoid that horrible feeling that I am drowning at the end of the longer sets: it has been getting to the point that it almost felt worse to stop than to keep going, because I just couldn't suck in air fast enough.
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