That was my "Question of the Day" yesterday. I had a tempo run on the schedule. I know that I'm pretty deep in a training cycle because there are some runs that I feel like I just have to force myself to do. Yesterday was one of those days. I was sooo not looking forward to another hard run. The wind was pretty stiff, which meant that my run back was going to be a couple hard miles into a headwind. Errgghh. I forced myself to take off after 20 minutes of procrastinating. Maybe if I just get this over with....
Well, it really wasn't as bad as I imagined. 45 minutes and I was done. Yeah - the run back was a little tougher because of the wind. But, I covered five miles in the allotted time. Put me right on a average pace of 9:00. The most interesting thing was that I didn't reach my target heart rate until about the mile 3 mark. The real purpose of a tempo run is to stimulate improvement of lactate threshold. This has *everything* to do with being able to stay aerobic during a race. And, the longer you can stay aerobic, the further and faster you can run! To stimulate this improvement though, you need to run at 80% to 90% of maximum heart rate for a 20 to 40 minute period (see Pfitzinger here). The bottom line is that the quality my workout was really suspect when 20 minutes of a 45 minute workout is warm up/warm down, and I don't break into the 80% bracket until 15 minutes into the actual workout. Hmm. This means that I *do* have room for improvement! Time to start pushing a little harder!
But, since today is Friday, it's rest day! Whew. I'm actually looking forward to an easy 12 miles on Saturday.
Okay. I wish I had a rest day. Dangit.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the Pfitz link -- isn't it great to know you've got room for improvement.
ReplyDeleteGreat work, Glenn. Looks like you're selling yourself a little short. I agree that it's time to start pushing it a little harder. Time to rock it down into the 8's.
ReplyDeleteI find that the hard runs are the easiest to talk myself out of, and yet they provide the most reward when I don't listen.
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