Moraghan Training - Stevie G

Right today, 4m no problems at lunch as usual.

Track session went quite well. Set my garmin to record 0.2m intervals. The track isn;t as easy as it should be to mark the 200m so went off the watch. Unfortunately a bunch of kids showed up for a session right as I was starting, so I kind of used half a track to do the session! Not sure the recoveries were always 100m but if anything they were shorter, not longer.

 First look on my garmin showed the splits a lot slower than I remembered, but then I realised that the whole time before stopping the watch was showing rather than just the 200m effort!

Therefore 100% accurate splits as below in order

Set 1   34, 35, 37, 37

Set 2  38, 37, 38, 38

Set 3   37, 36, 36, 31 (!)

 Surprised me that 39 seconds for 200m isn't that slow by the time you're doing a few reps. This is where I'd obviously gone wrong before, doing a couple way too fast, and then being shattered after about 4.

Therefore, a good workout,  the 2nd set was the best in terms of hitting the right pace. Rep 4 on Set 3 I think was partially due to a bunch of kids doing an interval in the lanes next to me, and me having to thrash them to not look silly! Also, down to  last rep syndrome!!

 Felt like I'd done a session on the recovery couple of miles home, but few hours later no problems.

sawney bean wrote (see)

Moraghan, notice Steve has started getting strides in his workouts, how often do you advocate doing these 100 metre strides in your weekly training

Hi Sawney

Steve is training for the 5k at the moment for which I like to see strides or an equivalent about 3 times a week on average.  So Steve does them before both quality workouts and has the diagonals which is a more organised version.  If he were doing just one quality session I'd add strides to another easy run.

After next week we'll get him on the drills before the diagonals session so he can embarrass hiimself in the park.

Steve

A couple of things:

-  I suppose the 0.2m included the recovery because that's about 335m.

-  You cannot use the Garmin on a track to measure the distance because it plots every few metres in straight lines and as a result is quite inaccurate on short ovals.  But you were probably close enough as it's just half the track.  There should be markings on the track at the 200m start, none at your track?

Good stuff on the session though.  We'll do more of these at that pace, but will make them progressively more challenging by doing more in a set and / or making the reps longer.  This gets you working at a faster pace and is the forerunner to some tougher vo2 max intervals.  In a few weeks you'll be doing 800m repeats at around this pace.

Sorry...meant to put that 0.2 was in k...so the 200metres of the interval...not 0.2m...whoops!

I then reset the watch for the next interval

Otherwise the reps with the recovery thrown in would have been a lot quicker, and way too fast for what I was attempting!

Noted on the garmin...but yes mostly the 1/2 track, so should be close enough.

The markings are obvious from 200 to 400, but once you've done the 100, you're runn ing 300 to 100 which are less obvious. This probably sounds ridiculous to a track seasoned pro...I've barely run on them!

Ha ha.  When I do these workouts I often jog 50m on way and then back to where I finished to I'm always starting and finishing at 'official places.

Did you not use the split / lap function on the watch?

When the track was at its busiest I started doing the 50 back and forward thing, makes sense.

For Thursday's session I will definitely use the split function...as the recoveries need to be timed as well.....in hindsight I was making things foolishly more difficult then necessary!

ta Sawney Bean... 2 races coming up quickly so hopefully some race times to come down....10k monday and 5miler the sunday after (9th).

 Be good to do another 10k to wipe the truly awful Hotel Olympia 10k in Feb out of my mind....terribly marshalled, unclear route, non traffic free, running back into oncoming runners, and a few nasty dangerous bits on wet metal paths and floorings, one of which produced a big slip and nicely swollen knee! Good times...and that was 37:03 so hoping for under that at least.

Today, nice 4m and 6miler. The 6 was pretty much either all up woody hilly terrrain or down smooth  hilly roads...so the pace per mile fluctated a lot..but the effort was still in keeping with the "easy" nature of the run.

Sawney

At your age (forgive me!) you already really pushing the envelope of possibility with 3 quality workouts and a long run (unless you are including the long run as a quality session).  If you were in your 20's I might say differently.

In the spirit of hard days hard etc, I would suggest you try and do the drills and strides before the quality workouts otherwise your recovery will be too compromised.

lunchtime...nice 4m as always.

 Evening...I'd say went 90% of the way to being spot on, explanation as to why not 100% in due course

Reps and recoveries as follows

 Reps   2:01, 2:02: 2:03, 2:01, 2:03, 2:04, 2:03

Recovs  0:59, 0:57, 1:00, (1min + 0:52), 1:04, 1:03, 1:00

 I thought I'd eaten my pasta, Lucozade and fruit nicely by 4 which gave almost 2 hours before I was into the reps. Seems I hadn't, hence, the extra minute "Pit stop" after rep 4!

However, pleased to hit the target pace near enough spot on each rep, and average around 1min for the recoveries. Am quickly realising that 50-60miles a week and 14mile long runs are the easy part

Felt like I was working quite hard throughout the session, but again no muscular issues tonight, which must mean it's a spot on session for my current condition!

Well done Stevie - good pacing.  I'd always try and have pasta 3 hours before a quality session and the fruit a bit closer (assuming it's low GI).

So, apart from the dump you were recovering at about 8:00 mile pace.  That's pretty good.  The progression next time will be to either bring the recovery time down or extend the rep length but maintain that recovery pace (perhaps over a different distance).

14miler done tonight...mental challenge on a friday evening!

Even passed some work colleagues stealing into a pub at 10miles for a leaving do!

Stuck it out for the full 14 including some fair old ups and downs, in 1hr 47.

Rest tomorrow...will be nice!

At least you didn't get kebabs thrown at you I suppose.

Two nice easy days to come before the fun starts! 

i was wearing an incredibly ridiculous pair of fluorescent gloves..mostly to keep a mate's ipod safe from the rain after killing my own one last sunday! That got a little abuse.

Yep...2 good races to see where I'm at pace wise.

Good luck tomorrow, race hard - hope the weather's good.

All - we got the mileage up there fairly quickly considering we also introduced some more comprehensive quality.  I wouldn't typically recommend doing both but we had an opportunity to reduce the number of medium effort days, reduced the average pace a fair bit on non-quality days and only added in runs when we were sure Stevie was recovering well (based on his feedback and quality workout performance) so it shouldn't have resulted in too much additional fatigue.  From now on we will probably be training at 65 miles or under, although we will revisit this ceiling every once in a while.