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A day to gauge fitness
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| Wednesday, 28 July 2010 - Written by Mury
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I've just been logging miles since my HM. Some runs are pretty easy and some have been harder, but it's all been solidly in the aerobic range. A very tiny bit of tempo'ish stuff, but that's it. Additionally, I haven't had a down week in a long time.
I figured today was as good a day as any to do a little time trial so I could do some sanity checks on my training run paces. I drove around once again looking for a track to use, but as expected everything is locked up. That irks me. Why spend the time teaching kids life long health/fitness skills if when they turn into adults you lock them out of facilities they are paying tax money for.
So I had to just pick a trail. I wanted to do a mile test, but didn't have a good mile marked out, so I had to wing it with the Garmin. I warmed up for a mile and then took a good guess on what might be a neutral elevation course. Turns out I climbed 50'.
Initially it felt good to run, but wow, I was really working. It's easy to forget just how real the struggle is running toward the top end of what you are capable of. I ran the mile in a decent time, still pretty freaking slow compared to what I used to do, but I'll take it. I'm wondering how much faster I would have run on a flat track, with no hills, no 50' total elevation difference, a crowd, and the pleasure of knowing where the end was, instead of having to listen for the Garmin beep. On my charts my pace really took some dives on the hills, as to be expected. I also didn't get close to my max HR either.
Anyway, it was nice to have some reassurance in some fitness changes and the ability to cross-reference some times with Daniel's VDOT and McMillan's calculators. My training paces have been getting faster without any conscious effort on my part and they actually fall in line pretty close to what they suggest for the mile time trial I just had.
With a shorter long run on Monday, Tuesday off, and today's experiment my mileage is way down this week, which I think is a good thing. I wasn't hurting yet, but I still think I could benefit from a break. I plan on taking the rest of the week fairly casual and hopefully hit it hard for all of August in terms of training hours and consequently mileage. |
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