The 3rd time's a charm!

Yeah on the much deserved rest, Jim. None of us want to see you leave the race in training - that coach Dave is pretty wise for a young 'un. Interesting about the 800m pace. I usually run mine at 5k pace (so around 3:25-3:30), but I will work up to 10 of them - wonder if less at a faster pace would help? Wonder what Coach Dave would say given I could be his Mom? Keep up the good work and continue to listen to your body.

Are you going to count the beer(s) as carbo loading?

Hope your rest as you put it is what you need. You've really been putting in the training Jim. I have no doubt if you can get to the starting line uninjured you will do well. Hope you have had a great holiday weekend!

Jim Lentz wrote:Are you going to count the beer(s) as carbo loading?

You gotta increase that glycogen storage

Nick Morris wrote:

Jim Lentz wrote:Are you going to count the beer(s) as carbo loading?

You gotta increase that glycogen storage

And remember, Jim's got the mentality of an ultra-runner, just not the mental illness of our lot

Well, things went down hill over the weekend, but I think I'm pretty well recovered at this point. I took Friday off and did 5 with 8 x 100 strides on Saturday. I had planned to go 14 on Sunday and got up early to do but just had no legs whatsoever. I think there were several factors that contributed besides the possibility of over training. I was probably not ideally hydrated, it was really humid even though it wasn't very warm, and I spent some time on Friday doing hard labor fixing a fence. I was really struggling to keep it at an 8:30 pace and decided to bag it and turned around at 4 miles for an 8 mile run.

So, I decided to give myself the day off on Monday. I took a nap, relaxed and ate and drank well. I went for an easy 5 miler last night and felt much better. I'll plan on 10-12 tonight and some intervals tomorrow, which should tell me for sure if I'm 100% back to normal.

Sounds like your body was telling you that you needed a break. Especially after the pounding you gave it this summer. You'll be back soon and will be better and faster...

Nick Morris wrote:Sounds like your body was telling you that you needed a break. Especially after the pounding you gave it this summer. You'll be back soon and will be better and faster...

Funny you should say that......

After 18 miles in the last 5 days, I went out for 10 tonight. The first 5 were pretty sluggish and I felt like I was working harder than I should have been to be hovering just over 8:00 pace. Then, just before mile 6, something clicked and my pace dropped about 10 seconds a mile and the effort level seemed to go down a bit as well. Cruised through the end of the run and finished at 10.2 miles at 8:02 pace.

So that's what fresh legs feel like! I had nearly forgotten!

mul21 wrote:

Nick Morris wrote:Sounds like your body was telling you that you needed a break. Especially after the pounding you gave it this summer. You'll be back soon and will be better and faster...

Funny you should say that......

After 18 miles in the last 5 days, I went out for 10 tonight. The first 5 were pretty sluggish and I felt like I was working harder than I should have been to be hovering just over 8:00 pace. Then, just before mile 6, something clicked and my pace dropped about 10 seconds a mile and the effort level seemed to go down a bit as well. Cruised through the end of the run and finished at 10.2 miles at 8:02 pace.

So that's what fresh legs feel like! I had nearly forgotten!

I speak from experience, my man...nice workout...

Nice 2nd half to your run - I have noticed similar feelings with my workouts and never could figure it out. Start out sometimes feeling like a fat slug but then after a while things start to get easier. Sometimes it will take better than an hour to get that feeling when cycling - weird. Anyway, I just wanted to echo that you have done some great work this summer and it doesn't surprise me that your legs feel heavy from time to time.

mul21 wrote:

After 18 miles in the last 5 days,
So that's what fresh legs feel like! I had nearly forgotten!

So with an unintended easy last few days, you're left with fresh legs. I guess that's the silver lining in a having dead legs and having to back off a little. Hopefully you're back stronger because of it.

Nice job coming back with a good run with fresh legs. You obviously needed this and this should propel you to some good training until taper time where you can rejuvenate and maintain peaking just perfectly for your race. LOL

Thanks John, Seth and Kenny. Definitely feeling more back to normal, as evidenced by the workout last night.

This was actually supposed to be done on Tuesday, but given the issues I was having, the week got totally changed around. Tuesday was an easy day, 10+ on Wednesday and intervals yesterday. The plan was to do 6 x 1200 between 4:40 and 4:50. I was forced to the mill last night, so I had paces picked out ahead of time. I ended up doing the repeats at 4:51, 4:48, 4:44, 4:41, 4:41, and 4:39 with a 2 mile warm up and cool down. That works out to 6:31 pace down to 6:15, so pretty much right where I wanted to be. Even though I was a bit tight when the run started, the residual fatigue that I had been fighting is pretty much completely gone and I've been sleeping much better lately as well. Just tells me I truly was teetering on the brink of redlining and the completely backed off weekend was a really good thing.

Sounds like a really nice LT workout there, Jim. What was the recovery time/distance/pace?

Mike MacLellan wrote:Sounds like a really nice LT workout there, Jim. What was the recovery time/distance/pace?

Hey, don't belittle my workouts just because you're fast. Jerk!

That was actually a VO2max workout and the recoveries were 2:30-2:40. I was doing .75 for the repeat and then a .25 recovery.

mul21 wrote:

Mike MacLellan wrote:Sounds like a really nice LT workout there, Jim. What was the recovery time/distance/pace?

Hey, don't belittle my workouts just because you're fast. Jerk!

That was actually a VO2max workout and the recoveries were 2:30-2:40. I was doing .75 for the repeat and then a .25 recovery.

Great work out but what is your thought on the 2:30 -2:40 rest. Do you need this much time to bring HR down and where are you bringing it down to. I typically do 2 minutes for 800 or above. 1:30 for below 800's.

As always you can't go wrong when you listen to your body and make the adjustments when needed. That takes discipline. Great job.

Kenny B. wrote:

mul21 wrote:

Mike MacLellan wrote:Sounds like a really nice LT workout there, Jim. What was the recovery time/distance/pace?

Hey, don't belittle my workouts just because you're fast. Jerk!

That was actually a VO2max workout and the recoveries were 2:30-2:40. I was doing .75 for the repeat and then a .25 recovery.

Great work out but what is your thought on the 2:30 -2:40 rest. Do you need this much time to bring HR down and where are you bringing it down to. I typically do 2 minutes for 800 or above. 1:30 for below 800's.

Honestly at VO2max efforts, a 2:1 work to rest ratio is about right, so I was on the high side of that, but not too terribly. You're probably shorting yourself on rest a bit and sacrificing some time on your repeats by taking that short of a rest. If you're doing LT intervals, then that's fine. When I was in high school we did a standing around rest and typically did 5K pace repeats with a 1 minute rest and 1 mile pace repeats with a 1:1 work:rest ratio.

Whoa whoa whoa, calling it an LT workout is actually a compliment, if that's your VO2max! I would've pegged your LT around 6:30 and VO2max in the high 5s! Plus the greater-than-4-minute work interval... Ah, that's what I get for trying to give encouragement.

Mike MacLellan wrote:Whoa whoa whoa, calling it an LT workout is actually a compliment, if that's your VO2max! I would've pegged your LT around 6:30 and VO2max in the high 5s! Plus the greater-than-4-minute work interval... Ah, that's what I get for trying to give encouragement.

Ha! See what happens when you try to be nice!

My LT is probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 6:35-6:45 based on McMillan and Daniels plus the gains (I think) I've made this cycle. You can definitely do a VO2max workout in longer than 4 minute intervals, it's just a lot more taxing. And since I started these around 6:30 and worked my way down, it was definitely a VO2 max workout. Plus, I've worked the endurance end of things so hard over the last year that my ability to hold top end 5K-10K speed at this point is pretty poor. That's one of the reasons I'm considering dropping race distances next spring and concentrating on some 5 and 10K races and possibly throwing in a half just for shits and giggles toward the end of the racing season.

I Know the books I have read say hold it for 2 min recovery jog. You say 2:1 ratio. explain this please. I am done with Vo2max this cycle but I will consider longer recovery time.

Kenny B. wrote:I Know the books I have read say hold it for 2 min recovery jog. You say 2:1 ratio. explain this please. I am done with Vo2max this cycle but I will consider longer recovery time.

400 repeats, 200 recovery jog; 800 repeats, 400 recovery; 1200 repeats, 600 recovery; mile repeats, 800 recovery. That's how I've done it since I started doing an active recovery. Like I said, we always did a standing recovery instead of jogging in high school, so that part of the concept is new to me but it would make sense to take a bit longer of a jog than you would if you were just standing around.

mul21 wrote:

Kenny B. wrote:I Know the books I have read say hold it for 2 min recovery jog. You say 2:1 ratio. explain this please. I am done with Vo2max this cycle but I will consider longer recovery time.

400 repeats, 200 recovery jog; 800 repeats, 400 recovery; 1200 repeats, 600 recovery; mile repeats, 800 recovery. That's how I've done it since I started doing an active recovery. Like I said, we always did a standing recovery instead of jogging in high school, so that part of the concept is new to me but it would make sense to take a bit longer of a jog than you would if you were just standing around.

Wow. That makes this a totally different work out for me. (maybe how it should be) Dave agrees I assume.

I've always heard that the ratio should be 1:1 for time, which would be 2:1 for distance if you were doing 100% vvo2max followed by 50% for recovery. Thoughts?

Mike MacLellan wrote:I've always heard that the ratio should be 1:1 for time, which would be 2:1 for distance if you were doing 100% vvo2max followed by 50% for recovery. Thoughts?

That's pretty much what I (poorly) was trying to say. Dave made these workouts a bit more challenging by shortening the rest period but taking the repeats a bit easier (at least on the miles and 1200s). Bottom line, as long as you're in the ballpark both in terms of effort on the repeats and time taken to recover, you're certainly getting some benefit out of the workout.

Now, I can't tell you what you're getting out of it if you run your repeats in lane 3 of the track and they're actually 6-8 meters longer than they should be!