Week 3 - Monday

Uh oh

No preamble required this week, is there? I mean I’m writing this preamble about how I don’t need a preamble, so maybe I’ll just shut up and get to it.

Oh! Wait. Hang on. I will say this: I’m trying to write about each workout soon after I do it rather than wait until the end of the week, as I did with the first entry.

Week 3, then

Monday: Rolling 200s

The weather on Monday was horrific. Properly, truly terrible. I mean it sounded kinda bad as I was getting ready, and I made the decision to wear my fancy running coat (which is, um, a bit tighter than last time I needed it), but even so I stepped out into some nasty rain. It was scheduled to get lighter, when in fact it got bad. Really, really bad.

Anyway, rolling 200s. This was:

1km warm up at conversational pace
Repeat the following 8 times:
- 200 metres @ 4:55/km
- 200 metres @ 6:05/km
800 metres at conversational pace

If you’re struggling with the maths, that’s 5km in total.

The warm up was FOUL. Ran down the hill and over the pedestrian bridge across the railway line. It was entirely flooded.

I’d identified a path in the local park that was about 300 metres long, giving me a decent opportunity to run out and back at the alternate paces. It was basically one giant puddle, with it still absolutely pissing down and extra rain falling off the trees too. I could barely see. Really the only saving grace was how few other people were about, where normally there would’ve been plenty of other runners and dog walkers there were barely any.

Also, running 200m out, 200m back wasn’t as good a plan as I thought because the actual U-turns were painful, the cause of much pace loss and just general annoyance. And how gutted was I to lose count - I thought I’d done all 8 reps so set off around the lake to start my final 1km of conversational pace - the 200 followed by the 800 - only to be told 200m in that I had to pull out another 4:55.

Results? Well look, I’ve already called out the weather and the U-turns as excuses. So anyway:

warm up was 6:30/km, very slow
all but the final 6:05/km segments were too fast, in the 5:48-5:57 range
the 4:55/km segments started way too fast (4:39) and progressively slowed… too much, with the last three being 5:02, 5:07, 5:00
cool down was 6:21/km

Graph

Here it is on Strava.

TBH I’m OK with that. 200 metres, with U-turns, is a really short distance to manage my pace properly - plus I couldn’t see what my watch was telling me. The average is alright.

Heading home I thought I might feel some sense of delirious achievement, not only for doing yet another interval workout but also pushing through in such terrible conditions. In actuality I went home feeling wretched and miserable. My hat and coat were more drenched than I can ever recall. I got changed into civvies, a prime day for wearing the Nike “Running Sucks” shirt, and didn’t shake my shitty mood all bloody day. At 8pm my shoes were still drenched.

Wednesday had best be better.