Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Hey you FT fibers--time to come out and play.

Starting to turn my attention to speed work in earnest (I have been throwing casual "fartlek" type eforts on the bike/run for a while and of-course getting into it now in the pool). Today's w/o's included an easy 1 hour spin on my trainer for warm-up (very nasty outside).

Then the main course--a structured LT interval session on the tready. This was a gentle intro back into the world of speedwork after about a 15-16 month hiatus (not counting races). After a 15 min warm-up at 9:05/mile, I did 15 x (1min @ 6:58/mile and 1 min @ 9:22/mile) followed by a warm-dwon and then 15 minutes of EFX. The 15 repeats felt relatively easy and I was pleased to see an excellent HR transient during the recovery intervals (probably dropping 15-20 bpm during the minute of slower running). The 15th was still quite easy--in fact I did it at 6:40/mile. In the days ahead I'll play with the length and intensity of the fast sections, the total "fast" duration (target is 15-30 minutes per session), relative length of fast vs slow, number of repeats, and incline % (today was 0%). I hope to do a run speedworkout every 5 days or so for the next 6-8 weeks.

My body's response today indicates I have very good "base-endurance" fitness but need to work on my headroom or LT threshold. and so I will.

Then jumped in the pool and did a timed 3000 at 50:55 (1:42/100 or about a 71-72 minute IM pace). this was about 30 seconds faster than last week (without straining). Would like to get this time down around 45 minutes (63 minute pace) by March.

Onward and upward!

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