Week 7: Monday - Over and Unders 400m
It’s like deja vu all over again
Monday. Yay? Week 7 starts with a workout suspiciously similar to the last “fast” one from week 6, but different and hopefully not prone to interruptions.
It was a lovely morning at least.
Over and unders 400m
Friday was 500m warmup, then alternating kilometres. Today was a longer warmup, and alternating 400m reps, at a similar pace to the workout which I failed at.
- 2km warmup
- 4x:
- 400m @ 5:25/km
- 400m @ 4:40/km
- 800m warmup
So that’s 6km in total.
I failed. At least I didn’t actually stop this time, for watch fail or trains, but I could not keep the pace going that Runna instructed.
| Target | Actual |
|---|---|
| 5:25/km | 5:23/km |
| 4:40/km | 4:37/km |
| 5:25/km | 5:20/km |
| 4:40/km | 4:53/km |
| 5:25/km | 5:48/km |
| 4:40/km | 4:50/km |
| 5:25/km | 5:50/km |
| 4:40/km | 4:50/km |
Giving myself some vague credit by applying the pace window (+/- 10s/km) rather than specific target, I still failed from rep 4 onwards. What’s more, the slower reps missed the target by more than the faster reps! I just needed much more recovery for those than Runna thought would be necessary.
The graph, in a way, doesn’t look too bad - except for how visibly broken I was after the second fast rep - and I should probably not be so harsh on myself because my route involves frequent turns, road crossings, and 400 metres is a short rep meaning any problem at the start is harder to fix… but anyway.
Once again, I only read the coaching notes after the fact and, of course, I did it wrong. Sigh. Coach Ben says:
The slower 400m should give you enough time to recover ahead of the faster 400m, but if it is feeling tough, then drop the pace of the faster reps.
(Emphasis mine)
Well, I mean, I did drop the pace of the faster reps… but not as much as I dropped the pace of the slower ones. Sigh. Whatever.
I’m genuinely miserable about it tbh. Even though those are my words above, where I supply what sound like feasible reasons for what happened, I just feel like - the experience of having a training plan just outright tell me what to do, and for several weeks surprising myself that I was capable of what it instructed - that’s over. Because the last two workouts involving any kind of speed have both been too tough, so I’m now waiting for its to reduce my pace targets. Y’know, like, “Oh… right. Thought you were better than that, but I guess you suck”. Although right now it’s gone into “variable pace detected” mode, with a recommendation that the targets remain as they are for now… maybe if I can get through Friday’s workout I can cheer up.