Starting to speed up again


Tonight was another track session, and I was worried that after the weekend’s exertions, I’d be in trouble. I made sure I had as much compression clothing on as possible and went off to Evans Road. The pace today was meant to be about 5-7 seconds faster than on a Wednesday, which meant I should be putting in 1:38s. Tonight it was 3x1100m, with 6:45 to do them and recover for the next, followed by 3×800, with 5 minutes per set. I have aesthetic issues with this kind of session, because I hate incomplete laps, but who knows how much benefit those missing 300m gave me?
1200-800-timings

To make the graphs readable, I’ve converted the pace on the 300m laps to what it would have been if I’d been able to run each third lap at constant pace.

1:39.14
1.36.78
1:13.95

1:37.98
1:37.49
1:13.54

1:34.33
1:36.57
1:12.68

1:32.97
1:36.21

1:32.69
1:37.29

1:30.80
1:33.66

All of the last 6 laps were much too fast. The pace should have been uniform throughout the session, rather than going almost 8 seconds faster on the penultimate lap. That implies I should have run most of the preceding laps quicker than I did. I certainly shouldn’t have been sprinting the last 100m to try to overtake somebody, but then perhaps the 800 is my distance after all.

The third 1100m is particularly deserving of note. I was making a special effort to relax my form and not pump my arms so much this time around. And so I did the fastest three laps of that section. I would have gone faster but after the first lap I took my foot off the gas a little, not wanting to blow up/not wanting to make earlier sandbagging so blatant.

After all this, I ran an extra 3k in warm down. I was chasing after a badge on Strava, which is a silly thing to do, but then so is running in circles. Walking back home, I felt better than when I started: the sign of a truly successful session. Not sure what tomorrow will think of today though…


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