Training Log Archive: fletch

My legs wholeheartedly agreed with my decision to do nothing today.

Thought I'd stuffed this one right from the start by heading north and doing a few controls which felt really inefficient. Chopped and changed route many times during the run, finally deciding to drop 5 and 6. The run through the SE corner went pear-shaped when I went to cut through the bowling club only to find that there was a big fence at the far end ofthe carpark where there was supposed to be a road. Annoying and had to double back and do controls in a completely different order, but probably worse if you hit it from the other direction. Things got worse when I realised there was no short way from 11 to 24.

Had kept the pace a little more conservative this time, and the temperature was lower and was happy that I was running consistently, but felt like it had been inefficient route-wise despite not having any of the little misses or directional bobbles of the last few runs. Still, when I looked at my watch with a couple to get and saw 10.6k I almost died. Still, saw tRicky a couple of times on the run in. Was about 30m behind him at my last and suspected he had 1 more to get, but wasn't sure, so went a different way and went hard. Glad I did, as crossing the last road, saw Ben coming in from a different direction and the sprint finish was on. Surprised how much I had in the tank and got there for a surprising win.

Route may have been a bit long, but most people seemed to be over 11km (Just a little long, Mr Toomey - maybe measuring a couple of routes wouldn't have been a bad idea after all...)

Roughly 2km warm-up and run-throughs, 1km cooldown, 4km collecting controls afterwards
After thinking that I wasn't going to get my long run in after driving to the event, it ended up being a long afternoon after all :)

C • Thank you 3

Survived yesterday better than expected, so put the rest day off till Sunday rather than ride 2 days in a row. Legs felt a bit toasted going uphill but other than that OK. Got a good draft off a truck on Marmion coming out of a roundabout and hammering along at 47km/h uphill. Regretted it immediately afterwards when the truck pulled out into the right lane and left me feeling totally knackered.

Knew it was going to be hard to combine a recovery ride home with 29km into a headwind, and struggled with the concept for the first half, just trying to ride in a slightly lower gear than normal. About half way home I totally lost interest and brain went to sleep which made the rest of the ride quite slow and relaxing, so was probably a good thing.

Feel like I have the edge of a cold. Hasn't amounted to anything yet. Still planning on having a trundle round the MetrO tomorrow.

Will fix up details later.
Slightly annoying session. Set it up on the watch to run 8 x 1km, 3 min recovery, expecting to run round the outside of the footy oval, but 400m track was re-marked, so ran there instead. Seems that wearing a watch on my right hand (silly left handers) and running on the 400m track I came up 40-50m short on each rep, so times should probably all be about 10 sec slower. (That's more likely than the track being wrong

Knew legs were feeling heavy, so having not checked the details with Tooms, I decided to run them at 10km pace (recovery time was plucked from old sessions), but after a few, and realising how totally recovered I felt after 3 minutes, I decided that with a recovery like that, I really should havebeen doing them at 5km pace, so tried to lift a bit. Legs sore, bit windy, but got through it OK. Nice to give the legs a rest tomorrow.

Times (950mish - I ran through to the 1km on about half of them, but the watch stopped at it's own 1km mark, so I gave up)
3:20, 3:20, 3:20, 3:21, 3:19, 3:15, 3:14, 3:17

Turns out I didn't lift the pace much after all :) and the first few were really a bit quicker than I thought anyway. Must get watch set so I can have a good look at my lap times before they disappear - I didn't see any of the first 4 at all, then started trying to look when the watch started it's warning beep near the end of the reps...

So realistically more like 3:30's down to low 3:20's. Still much better than I thought it would be. Looking forward to running some of these feeling a little fresher.

C • Lap time 3

Warm up down to Ridgewood, run thrus, cooldown back to school

Thought I was going to be pushed for time, then found I had a flat tyre when I pulled the bike out of the boot. Oh well. Took a little while putting the spare tube in. The thorn proof tubes I bought back in Gero are a bit of a hassle to fit in skinny rims, but got it seated eventually.

Left me with a very short free block of time, so quick warm-up, 3 x 8 min on, 2 min off, short cooldown and raced home. Turns out I didn't really need to rush after all, but legs were pretty stuffed regardless, so wasn't real fussed either way.

4 x 2km @'15km pace' 2:30 slow jog recovery

The wind was really howling, which made this session really hard to judge. The first section of each rep was devastatingly hard at any pace and the last km always felt comfortable. Legs felt rubbish into the wind. Thought I had paced them all OK, but splits suggest otherwise 7:30, 7:31, 7:45, 7:39

Blah. Oh well. could have finished faster, but tried to go for the right intensity rather than killing myself on the last rep, so not too terrible. Knee not so great today. Being back at school has been a bit hard on it.