Week 6: Friday - On/Off Ks
Interlude training
Spent large parts of yesterday fretting about this workout. Still felt tired, post-holiday and post-long run, and wondered how I was going to even get close to the requirements. Might have been unwise, therefore, to prepare by going to the pub and then for a curry, finishing the night with a big imperial stout. Oops.
On/Off Ks, the plan
Runna said to do this:
- 500 metre warm up
- 3x:
- 1k @ 5:25/km
- 1k @ 4:50/km
- 500 metre cool down
No rest breaks! No walking! Short warm up! You can maybe see why I felt a bit intimidated by this. That said, when I woke up I actually felt great, as if I’d fully recovered from everything and was… I mean, I won’t say “raring to go” but I felt much more confident than I had the day before.
On/Off Ks, the reality
An inauspicious start. I waited a full 10 minutes for my watch to get a GPS signal, eventually rebooting the damn thing after which I got a signal immediately. There’s a lesson here.
Part 1
Short warm up felt good. Started the first 1km rep much faster than 5:25/km, which felt great. Like, I honestly thought I wasn’t running anywhere near as quickly as the watch said. It was another “wow, I’ve improved a lot!” moment, and very much made me think I totally could do this workout as planned. Runna knows me better than I know myself. Let’s do this!
First km: 5:24/km. Basically perfect. Go me!
Second km: 4:57/km. A bit down on pace, and felt really tough actually. Totally against my expectation from only 5 minutes prior.
Third km: was only a third of a kilometre. As I was glancing at my watch to see my current pace, what I actually saw was it saying WATCH ERROR and the workout finishing.
Uh. What? I stopped, checked whether the watch had just returned to the home screen but was still actually recording an activity, but nope. The error, that I’d never seen or experienced before, had just stopped the workout and synced it immediately - I got notifications from Garmin, Strava and Runna that it was uploaded. Well, shit.
Interlude 1
What was I to do now? Well, I mean, having found the faster km tough I was actually glad for the break, but I didn’t want to give up – and I certainly didn’t want to start the whole thing from scratch. I couldn’t just knock up a workout on my watch that was “two thirds of a km @ 5:25/km, then 1km @ 4:50/km, … “. Hmm. Hmm!
Eventually I decided the best thing to do would be ignore the third of a km I’d just run, and start the same workout again – including warm up – but stop after the 4th 1km rep. I’d ignore the cool down 500m run, but since I always finish a distance from home it’s not like I ever finish and then stop moving, so I wasn’t concerned by that. So. Yes. Start the workout again.
Part 2
500m warm up.
First (third) km: 5:19/km. A little fast! Maybe the break was all I needed.
Second (fourth) km: 5:07/km. Ugh. No, this was too tough. I was just about keeping it together until I had to pause to cross a road with about 200 metres to go and then just hit a wall, pace dropping well into the 6:00+/km zone. Here, look at these stupid graphs from the period:
Third (fifth) km: was only a third of a kilometre. Again. I’d managed to pick the pace back up, not towards 5:25/km but heading in the right direction, but …
Interlude 2
As I ran towards the level crossing, the barriers were down. A train went through, southbound, but the barriers stayed down. So I stopped, and paused my watch. Had to wait for a northbound train to come through, which took an age because it had to stop and pick up passengers first. They totally could’ve raised the barrier for a good two minutes before dropping it again if they wanted, but no, here I was having yet another break in a workout that was meant to have none. And once again I was not-so-secretly appreciative of it.
Part 3
Third (fifth) km: I made up for most of the lost pace in the first third, eventually finishing it at 5:33/km, within the +/- 10s window around the target.
Fourth (sixth) km: by now I actually felt kinda strong, somehow. Increased to pretty much exactly what Runna was asking of me, and knowing it was my last km of the workout really helped. But, as always, the moment I went under the lightest of tree cover my Garmin decided I’d slowed up by like 30s/km or something, which just wasn’t true. Regardless, I came in at 4:59/km.
Here it is on Strava.
Aftermath
Bit weird, all in all. Runna’s overall thing about this workout is that it should’ve taken 35-40 minutes, and I took just over 39 minutes. I didn’t do the cooldown, but I did two warmups, so I ran the distance prescribed in the time prescribed. Some of my paces were good, but in some periods I was well off. I had two breaks when I was meant to have none. It’s all a mess and I hated it.
Did like earning a badge though.
Also liked earning a thing because I’d earnt so many badges!
