Week 6: Monday - Drop Set
Weight gain
Right. Monday 4th November, the day I was due to fly home from Seattle. But the flight wasn’t until 7pm, and I had late checkout (4pm) at the hotel, and it’s a Monday which means Runna has a workout for me to do.
I’d spent ages agonising, in private or chatting with Mike, about which workout to do. The scheduled one was a “drop set”, which looked very hard especially given how I was feeling after the stress and strains of so much travel and a fair bit of booze. I thought about swapping in any of the other 3 workouts of the week: 13km long, “on/off Ks”, or 6km easy… but after way too much time wasted considering the repercussions, i.e. what it would mean for the rest of the week as well as Monday itself, I just decided - fuck it - get out there and do what Runna says. So a “drop set” it is.
I felt delighted about the idea.
The “drop set”
A drop set, I learned, is an interval workout where each successive rep is shorter but faster. Let’s just jump straight into the table of “what I was meant to do” compared with what I actually managed. NB. there was 90 seconds of walking rest between every rep.
| Distance | Target pace | Actual pace |
|---|---|---|
| 1.2km | Conversational | 6:14/km |
| 1.2km | 4:50/km | 5:00/km |
| 1km | 4:45/km | 4:47/km |
| 800m | 4:35/km | 5:15/km |
| 600m | 4:30/km | 5:08/km |
| 400m | 4:25/km | 4:30/km |
| 200m | 4:15/km | 4:03/km |
| 1km | Conversational | 5:46/km |
So there’s a lot wrong here, isn’t there? What on earth went on? I’m glad you asked.
Seattle is famous for its weather. It rains. And oh sweet christ was it ever raining on Monday morning. I had to walk 1-2km just to get from my hotel to the starting point I wanted down on the shoreline, where there’s a long flat pavement which turns into a nice paved trail through a couple of parks. I’d scoped it all out the day before, when there were tons of runners around. Should have been a great place to run.
But, yeah, rain. A lot of rain. Plus it was freezing cold – 9ºc but wind chill brought it down to 3ºc. As I weaved my way through the city streets and down the steps and steep hills to reach the front, I legit considered giving up and just walking back to the hotel. Think I would’ve hated myself if I’d done that, but it was going to depend on how things felt in the open down the front.
Well, it felt alright. And I was into it now. I didn’t think it was possible to get any wetter than I had already become in the initial walk so whatever. Runna says do the thing, so the thing gets done.
The target paces were always going to be problematic. Firstly, because sub-5:00 for everything is still kinda intimidating despite recent progress. Secondly, because gauging just a 5 second per km difference in some of the reps, I mean for me that’s just way too narrow a margin to be able to cope with. But on longer reps at least, I hoped to be able to average in the correct region.
First run rep then, I’m surprised it averaged 10s/km off target but a good chunk of that could be because I had to do a couple of U-turns when I ran out of path, and also because I was jumping around puddles. But that was a feature of the whole run.
Second rep felt great. No pace warnings at all. I looked at my watch and it told me I was exactly on pace pretty much the whole time. Felt strong. Felt stupid, and I now learned that I could indeed get wetter, as my shirt started to really weigh me down so drenched was I.
So what went so terribly wrong on the 800m and 600m reps? I’ll tell you what: a headwind. I’d run as far away from the hotel as I wanted to and turned back, and only then did I realise just how strong the wind was. It was proper, disgsusting, horrific headwind which Strava told me afterwards was 24kph. For both reps I started off well but just couldn’t sustain it. Hills are apparently less of a problem for me these days, but wind? Wind can fuck off.
Here, here’s the pace graph.
The U-turns are definitely visible in the first run rep, I was right about that. But the third and fourth rep, really just dismal in the headwind.
So how did I get back on the horse for the 400m and 200m reps? Well, fairly obviously, I turned round and ran with a tailwind of course. I hated running into the wind, and I also hated knowing I was so far off the target Runna had set for me. So I wanted to prove to myself and the app that I can actually propel myself that quickly. I’d decided before I even left the hotel that the 200m rep would just be full send, and in the end I’m a tiny bit miffed it wasn’t sub-4:00/km!
The cooldown was back towards the hotel in the headwind which had yet to relent, and I’m very bloody happy with the pace. I thought it might be like 7:00/km or something.
Walked back to the hotel, which took like another 40 minutes or so, mostly uphill. Felt really pleased with myself for surviving the idiocy. Genuinely don’t think I’ve ever been so drenched though, my shorts and shirt felt like they weighed a kilo each or something. Bonkers.