well, our 10yo's soccer team didn't even make it out of the group round in their soccer tournament but the weekend was crazy. With all we had going, I ended up going out for my long run yesterday evening past 8:30. For a 90 minutes long run, that was a bit late. And it was a grind. I'd had a ham sandwich for dinner at about 7:30 because we were with our 17yo at his pre graduation ball cocktail. I'm used to eating little before heading out for a run and even on race day, I usually eat breakfast a good hours before the start, so when I got running, I felt heavy and had trouble with digestion.
That 90 minute run was of the 3/1 type meaning I was to do 3/4 of it easy and 1/4 at race pace. 3/4 of 90 minutes if 22:30 and I usually do the race pace section toward the end of the long run but will leave myself 5 minutes of cooldown easy running. That means running easy from start to 1:02:30, then race pace from 1:02:30 to 1:25:00 than last 5 back easy.
I'm thinking I could do 4:20/km pace (about 7:00/mile) over a half marathon but with how late it was yesterday and I felt, I decided to shoot for 4:30/km (about 7:15/mile) instead.
As I said, it was a grind, and that race pace part more than the rest, but I pushed through it. Covered 5.08 km in 22:30 for an averace pace of 4:26/km (7:08/mile). I can live with that. It wasn't really pretty though as I kinda let running form go out the window toward the last 8-10 minutes and it shows on my cadence number. Cadence was around 186 or so for 3-4 kilometers but fell under 180 during that last km at race pace. This means I was pushing more like an end of race kick than with the efficiency I usually have in the middle of race miles...
Oh well, got it done, then got home and watched USA-Portugal which I had DVR'ed and was able to avoid getting the score spoiled. Finally got to bed at about 1 AM, sigh. But you know what, I was back up at 5 am to run today's recovery run. 7 km that more than once I told myself I would cut to 5 km, but did them all. I don't recommend running 7 hours after a long run, or on only 4 hours of sleep either for that matter.
Overall last week, 31.38 miles in 4:34:54 for an average pace of 8:46/mile but the average pace means so little anymore, give how I do my recovery and easy runs based more on HR than sped/pace...
The training plan for the week:
MON: 7 km recovery run
TUE: 9x 400m @ 5K pace (300m easy)
WED: 7K easy run
THU: 40 minutes progression
FRI: Rest
SAT: 5K @ race pace (1K WU + 1K CD)
SUN: 90 minutes easy long run
Tomorrow is a Holiday in Quebec so I'll be off from work. I plan on doing my intervals in the morning, before breakfast, and offering my 10yo to go out for a 2 km run around dinner time so he can do at least a few practice runs before he races on July 4th.
FM