Last week I’d had two particularly hard workouts, on Thursday and Friday. Thursday we did tabatas, which as I’ve explained before are a ridiculously hard, intense workout. Following tabatas, on Friday we did weighted sled pulls, maxing out on the weight till I could do no more. I maxed out at 155 pounds, ten pounds more than my last max sled pull. Both workouts were great, but they left my legs sore, tired, and completely trashed.
Saturday morning I set out to run mile repeats. The goal was to run four miles, each at a sub-7 minute pace. I’m more than capable of running at that speed, and my 5k is less than a week away where I’ll need to run faster than 6:53-miles in order to break my current 5k PR. It’s definitely not out of reach, but I needed to get in a few fast miles to bolster my confidence.
I set out at an easy pace, logging 1.5 miles as a warm-up. The first mile of my training runs are always slower than the rest of my run so I wanted my legs to be warmed up completely before trying to push the pace. I came to a mile marker on the trail and kicked it into gear.
I’m not going to lie. I wasn’t able to get a single mile under seven minutes. Hell, keeping them under eight minutes seemed difficult. My sore, tired legs could not, would not move.”Drive! Drive! Drive!”I said to myself as I trying to push myself forward. It was no good, my legs were unable to move as fast as I wanted them too, they were still too fatigued from the previous workout I’d subjected them to. Instead I logged four miles that were mediocre at best: 7:45, 7:22, 7:51, 7:37. I had nothing. Nada. Zip. Zero push, zero gas, zero get-up-and-go.
This does not bode well for my upcoming race. In fact, this makes me doubt the entire training program. But I’ve given it six weeks and Thursday will be the final test. Thursday will be the day where I see if the idea of lifting heavy/running little makes me a faster runner. Right now I have serious doubts about the effectiveness of this training plan. I’m hoping that with a few days of light workouts (Monday and Tuesday) and day of running to shake out my legs (Wednesday) I’ll be ready for Thursday’s race. I’ll know soon enough!
Your post reminds me of something I read yesterday from the FIRST book “Run Less, Run Faster”. They talk about cross-training and extra runs, and say that as long as they don’t interfere with your ability to do the workouts, they’re okay. But they feel that even if you aren’t hitting the times you want in the workout, it’s the intensity level that is more important. As long as you feel like you’re giving it your all, actual speed is a secondary concern. But if you can’t finish the workout, that’s an issue.
I’m proud of you for pushing through that workout, hopefully those times were just part of a bad workout, I’m nursing my hamstring right now, think I pushed too hard Saturday too
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