June 2nd, 2009
I am coming to understand just how badly I have done level three training in the past. There isn’t much I can do about past years but I am trying to get better going forward. Still, I have a long history of going to hard or two easy in level three, and this is proving hard to overcome:
So on Friday I did four times two miles of hilly terrain on a road near my house. I purposely didn’t check my times from last year. It is very hilly, so I knew I would be slow, but I was shocked when my times ranged from 11:50 to 12:30. A check on last year shows that I was just slow that day; times around 11:00 – 11:30 are par. It felt hard enough, but clearly it wasn’t.
So yesterday I went to the track for six times a mile, 1 minute recovery, and ran them all in 5:18. It is amazing how easy the first one was, and how hard the last mile was. Next week I will try to remember that effort and make it work away from the artificiality of the track.
June 2nd, 2009 at 2:04 pm
On one hand cruising 6 one mile repeats in 5:18 at level 3 is very good. Yet this makes me very curious if you only had a 1 minute recovery were you really in a zone 3? If so your recovery rate is outstanding.
So if I understand this you had a sustained session in level 3 on all 6 mile repeats? Why not just do a pace run for 3 to 6 miles and see where things faulter a bit? Or is that why you used the 1 minute to not let yourself faulter? Yes level 3 on a track is much easier than rolling terrain.
My thought is that with top end level 4 and 5 running on the track, there is no substitute for getting faster on all terrains. To get faster at a higher end you need to be very efficient in stride. Your inefficiancies in stride and cadence become very apparent on the track and more hidden on trails and roads yet it is there in a big way. My rationale is that the clock and precise measurement on the track doesn’t hide anything. Finding a second per lap at no addtional effort is GOLD! Hence the reason I suggested that you run with people faster than you but this doesn’t seem possible in your geographic area. Typically I see cross country skiers who are good runners have issues with over striding. If you over stride you are defintely less efficiant making each mile become tougher. I am more curious about your thoughts on the design of this work out vs. my attemping to suggest something that you do something otherwise.
I am going to guess from what I read that you will run a sub 16 somewhere between 15:20 and 15:55 in your next 5k.
Good luck!
June 2nd, 2009 at 8:12 pm
Hi Dave,
I think I can be pretty confident in the level three claim. I didn’t grab my heart rate too often, but I got it 20 seconds after the last effort and it was down to 145 already, so I was recovering quite well. My goal is to go under 15:20 this weekend and the charts I have say that this workout supports that.
If anything I understride a bit; I was around 97 strides per minute yesterday and my cadence increases a bit when I go faster.
My goal was indeed to avoid faltering; after my poor showing on Friday I wanted a workout that built confidence without beating myself up too much. I could certainly run four miles continuously at that pace, but the recovery periods made it easy (till the very end, anyway). I will be doing more sustained level three over the next month or so, some of it on the track.
I obviously like the track, as I am on it a lot, but I also really like repeats on measured grass or dirt trails. I find that an uneven surface gives great feedback about stride efficiency under stress, since it suddenly becomes much harder to run smooth. Of course, if the course isn’t very accurately measured the information you get back isn’t so good…
I also like to get off the track because I have a tendency to check my split times every 100 meters, which means I am not paying attention to my body but only to my watch. It took serious will power to look at my watch only four or five times during that last mile repeat yesterday. Indeed, it took till mile four to wean myself down to only 10 glances at the watch.
June 3rd, 2009 at 2:50 pm
Wow. Give a math man a workout and you get lots of stats! Give a computer guy with a head full of zombie a workout and you get a lot of diversion and watches in the lost and found I guess. Sounds like you need a good GPS and/or odometer wheel to keep your mind off the 100 meter increments.
If your times were “too slow” then what leads you to believe that you just aren’t as fit as last year? If you are able to nail the same effort each time by feel, then your times would be an indicator of fitness, especially if you were always right on the correct effort for your body for that moment. Sometimes I think a sub threshold workout is also a good time trial technique because your performance is less affected by daily variances like sleep, nutrition, fatigue, etc. Especially if you hit it in the same mental context.
June 3rd, 2009 at 7:29 pm
Hi Patrick,
Yeah – I definitely generate too many stats. It is impressive to be able to calculate race penalties and points just based on the splits I get mid-race, but it never helped me go faster.
So far my race efforts and almost all my work on the track points to me being more fit than last year. So an off day of level three indicates mostly that I wasn’t trying hard enough – and maybe that my mental game and/or my threshold specific fitness needs some work.
I actually find that my level three efforts vary more than my time trials or races. If I am tired or out of shape and only have 90% of peak form available, and then I try to give 90% of this, then I should get 81% of peak form on that day (9% below my expected L3 performance). But more often I lose motivation and give only 80% of 90% and end up at 72% of peak form (18% percent below expected L3 performance). If I did a max effort that same day, I would most likely hold together better and give say, 96% of 90%, and so end up 13.6% below expected performance, not great but certainly closer than the L3 scenario.
(I am going to lose half of my readership if anyone reads down this far in the comments. But I am who I am so I will leave it!)
June 4th, 2009 at 1:03 am
Ahh, so it’s a head game – which sounds about right for any of us. I’m envious of your abilities with numbers. BTW, I also enjoyed your articles about the different intensity levels. Thanks!