Life is like music; it must be composed by ear, feeling, and instinct, not by rule.

Saturday, February 5, 2011

Saturday, Feb. 5th . . . 3x1 intervals . . .

A lot of the snow melted but not enough around my house to do intervals so I had to drive to another park that has interior roads where no cars are allowed and the roads were plowed yesterday and almost completely dry. After my barefoot warm-up on the treadmill, I got my gear, laced up the Nike Air Zooom Streak XCs, and drove to the park.

I started with a 3 mile warm-up, then moved into 3x1 mile intervals, with the 1st at 10k effort pace, 2nd at 5k effort pace, and 3rd back at 10k effort pace. I hit the interval paces at 6:30, 6:15, and 6:28. The key is this was "effort" pace and not race pace. This was 7-8 effort level which is exactly where I like to be for training. I only increase to actual race pace and 9-10 efforts levels for races. Other than short interval training, I don't train at race pace but I train pretty close, usually within :15 seconds per mile. I can make up the delta when racing with the increased focus and adrenalin levels. I feel good and that's the best part.

I've carved back my number of hard days to 2 per week as opposed to 3 per week. At 3 per week, that didn't result in increased race times and the additional hard day of running increased by chances of injury so there was no benefit to the additional hard day for me. I believe in doing the minimal race pace training to achieve my racing goals with the rest of my running at a nice comfortable pace. As you get older you really have to pay attention to how long it takes your body to recover. I'm finding I need 48 hours between hard sessions whereas prior I just needed 24 hours. It's just a reality you need to deal with.

I'm not sure what shoe I will run in tomorrow, and I'm still determining whether the Evo will be my race shoe or easy run shoe. It's a pretty tough decision based on numerous factors. I will definitely continue with a shoe rotation but the question is which shoes I use for hard sessions and which shoes for easy sessions. I'll have to wait until my body gives me the answer. I'll have to be patient as I would like the answer now but my body isn't ready to give me the answer just yet. Maybe my body is still deciding.

HHH

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