Friday, February 15, 2008

Solid Week

Sunday- yoga
Monday- 15 miles - 2:12
Tuesday- weight work
wednesday- 12 Miles (10 run 2 walk)
Thursday 6 miles (5x1000m)

Some nice solid work this week. I'm still keeping with the day on day off schedule with my runs being on the longish side. Monday was pure steady, wednesday I did 10 miles running then walked 2 at 12% grade with a 25lbs weight vest on (Hardrock looms!)

Yesterday was a great weather day 45 degrees perfectly still with blue skies and a warm sun. I went to the track and put in a classsic repeat workout: 5 x 1000m with equal recovery time. This one went well with laps of: 3:44, 3:42, 3:41, 3:41, 3:38. I tried to run very steady with a tiny bit of increased effort as the workout progressed. HR averages: 153, 155, 155, 156, 157




You can see the warm up, strider, 400m in 93sec, then 5x 1000m reps, and cool down here. cool!

It just felt good to be on the track and pushing. This is the 4th week in a row with a solid fast workout for me. Habit?? I hope so.

5 comments:

Bryon Powell said...

Loomis,
Glad to see you are out there doing some quicker stuff. I'm not quite to the speed work stage yet, but am loving adding longer daily runs and more hills in to my routine.

As for your 5x1000, would it make more sense to drop the recovery time to something shorter equal recovery? I'm guessing that the 153-157 bpm range is well below your marathon effort. Why not shorten the rest and make this workout something more akin to cruise intervals?

I am a runner. "We are what we repeatedly do" said...

Bryon good point, the traditional thinking is to do as short as tolerable recovery on make vo2-pace types of reps (800m-2000m reps) In fact my whole running life since 7th grade I have done repeats like 3x mile on 1-3minute rest. and when fit my HR drops down below 100 within 60-90sec following the repeat so I am "recovered" yet, I never have seemed to respond well to this type of training. I always left my best running on the practice track....except a few rare periods when I was training alone or out of season and I did BIG recoveries. like 3x mile with 5-8 min rest. In this "out of season" periods I attained a fittest level that I rarely ever exceeded during the racing season. I responded incredibly to 1-2 workouts a week with longer rest. the letsrun guru TINMAN also recommends a longer rest than traditionally thought on vo2 max type reps. think about it...the purpose of this running pace is not to improve lactate clearrance...it is to improve running efficiency at this max pace. Why rush into another repeat? Lactate threshold repets like cruise intervals sure...short rest has a benefit, but I'm not so sure here. I am going to try it out for a while and see.

Also of note was my brother Tim (who has pretty similiar genetics) semed to respond incredibly to 1000m reps with big recoveries when he was racing his best. (far superior to my PR's)

I think the difference is really evident the next day... I am not nearly as sore/stiff/beat up/ and mentally unwilling to run when using bigger recoveries. So that alone makes it worth while

Bryon Powell said...

Gonna dig a little deeper here.

What is the purpose of "improving running efficiency at max pace" this time in the season, which I assume is base building time for you?

Is 5:50/6:00 really near your "max pace"? Honestly, I would guess you max pace would be much high.

I need to read more about efficiency training. I've obviously, heard of it, but though it consisted of even shorter faster stuff.... and that it could be largerly taken care of by throwing in some striders at the end of a sun.

I am a runner. "We are what we repeatedly do" said...

Goat,
repeats done at current 5k pace (for me about 5:50 per mile are roughly at ones VO2max pace or the maximum velocity you can hold when your muscles are extracting 100% of the oxygen they can extract from what you breathe in. You can run faster than this...but you are oporating anaerobically and one can not sustain the pace.
Repeats at this pace will increase the cellular efficiency and induce a reaction of the muscle to create more mitochondrion and grow more capillaries, and increase the number of cellular enzymes. Physically anytime one runs fast they can gain neuroligcal efficiency as the brain learns how to better recruit and fir certain muscles to make the running more smooth and less energy costly. striders work for this too.

Running at the lactate threshold or the pace you can roughly hold for one hour increases the bodies ability to utilize and "clear lactate from the blood and thus are great too.

A total training routine would involve sprinting striders for neurologic efficiency. Wrok at Vo2 max pace and work at lactate threshold. Toss in a long run for endurance and you can perform well at any distance.

For me now...I am not very fast in terms of where I would love to be 2:36 marathon shape. In order to be able to run that... I need to increase my 5k pace....thus the shorter repeats with bigger rests.

Bryon Powell said...

Ok, so we were just operating under s cloud of confusion. I didn't take "max pace" to mean "Vo2 max pace," but rather full on maximum pace for repeats. Likewise, when you said "running efficiency" I thought you meant biomechanical/neurologic efficiency rather than metabolic efficiency. Makes total sense to me now! :-)