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Monday night tempo gets serious
Posted by
vat
,
14 May 2012
·
180 views
Had a couple of beers and wines over lunch and dinner on Sunday as part of Mother's Day celebrations, and pulled up "a little sore for the run". I came up okay from the actual run on Sunday, though.
With the easy week and race out of the way, it's back to work for the next block of hard training. I had a little think about the Monday and Wednesday tempo sessions and what I wanted from them, with Monday being shorter and sharper, Wednesday a little longer and 'steadier'.
I'm working to a bit of a 'window' for marathon pace, training to 4:10 pace whilst keeping 4:14 (a touch under 3 hour marathon pace) in mind, and decided that would make a good framework for the tempo sessions - aim for around 4:10 or better through the 'paced' bits of the Monday session, 4:14 or so for the longer Wednesday instalment. The tempo sessions serve as getting used to marathon pace or a bit better for extended periods, and developing the 'gearbox' around these speeds.
So, for this week, I want to start edging the distance up on these sessions. Both sessions had been mired around 11/13km respectively, and I really want the Monday session closer to 1h15, and Wed 1h45.
For today, the session was a 1.2km warm up at about 4:30 pace and then into the session (no stopping, just taking a lap at this point to start lapping the 2.25k UQ Oxley Walk track around which the session is based. The laps went 4:10 pace, two at just under 4:08 pace, the next at just under 4:09 and then the final hard lap at just over 4:07. I knocked out about 1.2k at around 4:16 pace as part of the cool down and did the final 2.3k at just over 4:30 pace to give 15.73km in 1:06:43, giving 4:15 pace for the session including the middle 11km or so at around 4:08/09 pace, which was exactly what I was looking for out of the session. The pace felt firm, pushing initially but once up to speed and properly warm, held with a good comfortable rhythm, easing through the 150s into the low 160s late in the paced part of the session.
Really pleased with the hitout - I'd been more planning on 13k but it just seemed simpler to work the laps out the way I did, plus feeling strong it felt right to capitalise on it and make a longer session out of it (that and I didn't do too many k's on Sunday!). Got a good vibe going right now.
With the easy week and race out of the way, it's back to work for the next block of hard training. I had a little think about the Monday and Wednesday tempo sessions and what I wanted from them, with Monday being shorter and sharper, Wednesday a little longer and 'steadier'.
I'm working to a bit of a 'window' for marathon pace, training to 4:10 pace whilst keeping 4:14 (a touch under 3 hour marathon pace) in mind, and decided that would make a good framework for the tempo sessions - aim for around 4:10 or better through the 'paced' bits of the Monday session, 4:14 or so for the longer Wednesday instalment. The tempo sessions serve as getting used to marathon pace or a bit better for extended periods, and developing the 'gearbox' around these speeds.
So, for this week, I want to start edging the distance up on these sessions. Both sessions had been mired around 11/13km respectively, and I really want the Monday session closer to 1h15, and Wed 1h45.
For today, the session was a 1.2km warm up at about 4:30 pace and then into the session (no stopping, just taking a lap at this point to start lapping the 2.25k UQ Oxley Walk track around which the session is based. The laps went 4:10 pace, two at just under 4:08 pace, the next at just under 4:09 and then the final hard lap at just over 4:07. I knocked out about 1.2k at around 4:16 pace as part of the cool down and did the final 2.3k at just over 4:30 pace to give 15.73km in 1:06:43, giving 4:15 pace for the session including the middle 11km or so at around 4:08/09 pace, which was exactly what I was looking for out of the session. The pace felt firm, pushing initially but once up to speed and properly warm, held with a good comfortable rhythm, easing through the 150s into the low 160s late in the paced part of the session.
Really pleased with the hitout - I'd been more planning on 13k but it just seemed simpler to work the laps out the way I did, plus feeling strong it felt right to capitalise on it and make a longer session out of it (that and I didn't do too many k's on Sunday!). Got a good vibe going right now.
