Consistently slower


Tonight was the first time that I managed to get to the track for this particular workout since before Destroyer was born, demonstrating once more the perils for your aerobic fitness of having kids. It was one of my not-particularly-favourite threshold sessions: 15 minutes at threshold pace, followed by 3 minutes rest, then 10 minutes, two minutes rest, and five minutes to finish you off.
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Knowing that I’m heavy and slow, I was aiming for a 1:45 lap time, and on the first 15 minutes I didn’t go too badly. On the second set, things were a bit too slow, and then I stopped to retie my shoelaces before the last five minutes, and kackhandedly failed to get my right shoe undone properly, which took another minute to fix.  Still, that was extra recovery time.

As a result, my two fastest laps were at the end.  The first, after my extra long recovery, when I went out much too quick.  I did the first 100m in about 24 seconds and then dialled it back, but still came in too quickly.  That wrecked me for the following lap, but then I had enough energy to drive round hard for the last one.

Of course, if you’re wearing a powermeter then you really should spend time looking at that data too, so here’s the average wattage per lap:

power151005

So my highest power output was on my slower laps (with the exceptioon of that dip on the penultimate lap, when I was going slower but also putting out less energy than any other lap) – again, this tells you that my form was getting more ragged as I was going slower but for more effort, but it doesn’t tell me exactly what I should be doing to correct for it.  Going out even slower, perhaps?

It still feels like I’m just playing around at the moment.  I haven’t done a serious power test since when I arrived back jet lagged in Singapore a month and a half ago.  Maybe I should be doing that, and then seeing if I can then start to plan my training around power.

Although I’m slower than I used to be, I think I’m (mostly) more consistent.  And I have to be thankful for my wife taking the brunt of entertaining Destroyer and La Serpiente tonight while I was gadding about at the track.  Every metre run is another special gift.  Now to get quicker…


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