Speed Build: Week 6: Poole Park Run
Monotony.
Holly tells me that she couldn’t stand being a sponsored athlete. The boredom of the wake, eat, train, eat, train, eat, sleep cycle used to drive her mad. I have to admit that I kinda like it. I’m very structured with my routine - or rather, I was. My thirties consisted of uniform days. Wake at 4am, drink coffee, train at 4:30-5am, work all day, come home, eat, go to bed by 8pm at the latest. I don’t recall a lot of happiness or contentment from that time and I’m sure this was felt by those around me. When Holly and I found each other (again) in my late thirties, everything changed. We spent a lot of time, travelling, racing and rediscovering all the fun things that make life worth living. To date this is still very much the case. Training and work tend to fit around whatever plans we have. Neither of us are driven by the desire for more material things - we just want adventure!
That being said, we returned from Cornwall and into a somewhat familiar pattern. I decided to run 8 miles easy on Monday, followed by a few easy miles on Tuesday. I feel good, albeit a little tired after last weeks training.
Wednesday Session:
This was a good one. 20/15/12 mins at threshold off 3 mins jog recovery. My LT pace is 3:53 and the thought of running 47 minutes at this pace made me question my ability to do so. Lo and behold I did it and, once again, it went better than anticipated, although I did feel particularly tired for the rest of the day… On a side note, I think it’s interesting how we judge others depending on what we value from a fitness and/or aesthetics perspective. I’ll openly admit that when I was running on the treadmill I felt superior to all the big meatheads walking slowly between exercises or, even worse, walking on the treadmill whilst holding on to the handles (in my eyes, this is the epitome of laziness when it comes to doing your mandatory ‘cardio’. Jesus, you’d get fitter and burn more calories walking down the road). BUT, I also remembered how I judged runners when I was a big old lump. I thought of them as skinny and weak. Not ‘real men’. I stand by my statement that running is almost certainly a negative for building an aesthetically pleasing physique, but frankly, Powerlifting is not a hard sport and I had reached a stage in life where I felt I needed to be truly challenged. As a mid to back pack runner, training to run under 3 hours for a marathon is HARD (if not impossible for some).
If you want to find your limits, running will help you do that. And if you gut out a solid training block or ten, it will allow you to blow past those limits and reward you with the opportunity to create ones you never dared dream of.
My reasons for being strong these days are a little more thought out. Having muscle is important for daily function, metabolism, staving off injury and yes, for looking good. I care about aesthetics and I don’t. If someone tells me that I’m so much smaller than I used to be, it doesn’t bother me - not even a little bit. Years ago it would have crushed me. But I do want to be in fairly good physical shape nonetheless. If I end up looking like an olympic marathoner then I had better be going to the olympics. This looks unlikely.
Anyhoo.
Thursday was another easy 8 miles followed by a 4 mile recovery run on Friday, since I was heading to Poole Park Run on Saturday morning. This is the fastest Park Run I could find within an hours drive. Buoyed with confidence since my speed is increasing on a weekly basis, I was fairly sure I’d hit at least 17:50. As it turned out, I had arrived on the only Saturday where the park wasn’t entirely closed. There was a festival taking place and, as such, cars and vans were going in and out at all times. This prompted the start line to be changed to a narrow road, and those of us starting at the front of a pack of 600-700 runners were then pushed back to make room to make room for the last minute runners at the front. When the start command was given, I spent more time than I would have liked attempting to work my way through a very tight crowd, which was near impossible. My average pace was high 4’s until I broke through, sprinting to try to catch up and in the process, going way too fast. So fast in fact, that my first k was a 3:32 average, putting me in the hole as we turned onto the lake and got hit by the wind. It was hard, man. Not what I was expecting. I ended up trying to hang onto one guy, which I just managed to do. The next 2 k’s ticked off 3:35, 3:35 and then on k number 4 the wheels started to come off. 3:43. My head was full of negativity. I was pumping my arms for all I was worth but it wasn’t enough to maintain the pace I needed. Seeing a k this slow makes you want to throw in the towel, but I gritted my teeth and went deep into the pain cave, bringing it back a bit for the final k. 3:39. I screeched over the line but forgot to stop my watch. According to my Coros, I went through 5k in 18:01 but PR gave me 18:10 due to not starting my watch until I past the start line (in Park Run, the timer is started for everyone when the ‘go’ command is given).
Not a bad time by any stretch of the imagination but not what I expected to hit. Happily, we found a 5k road race not far from us on July 9th. I’d like to redeem myself if I can. I’ve never raced in the evening before and the temperatures here currently are very warm with high humidity.
The week was closed at 55 miles with a solid 15 miles over 250+m of elevation at an avg pace of 4:50 per k and an avg HR of 140bpm.
Bring on next week, it’s going to be hot and Wednesdays session is spicy!