Week 7: Wednesday - long run
In the long run
Yeah, think this is my last long run midweek. Could still change my mind, especially as I have a dirt cheap beanie arriving today that includes a light, but Saturdays could be the new Wednesday. It’s dark.
14km conversational pace
Runna thinks conversational pace, according to the warmup of this coming Friday’s horror workout (spoiler!), is currently “no faster than 5:40/km”.
For once I read and remembered and heeded the advice of the coach, this time around being Ben. Some of the things said were:
Use this run to work on your pacing - try and be as consistent as possible
And
If you find the distance is getting too much for you, slow it down and try to keep a jogging movement going.
And
Get the distance done and don’t worry about meeting a pace target.
And
Before today’s run, you can try to experiment with your nutrition. Try having the breakfast you intend to have on the day of the race and see how you feel energy-wise.
Well OK then! Let’s tackle those in a different order to which I quoted them.
“Experiment with your nutrition”
This morning I got up at 5am and had a banana, a protein flapjack, and 500ml of full fat Coke. READY LIKE A BOSS, and delighted about it.
Plenty of time for it to all settle as I didn’t head out the door until it was light, which at the moment means about 6:50am.
“Don’t worry about meeting a pace target”
Today, for the first time in 6 weeks, I re-enabled auto-lap so that I’d know how fast I ran each kilometre. Not that I was wanting to be told to speed up, rather I wanted to be told if I was going too fast so I could tone it down a little. Didn’t want to get carried away. Unlike two weeks ago on the 12km, I wasn’t going to be singing any Gilbert & Sullivan today.
“[If it’s] getting too much for you, slow it down …”
It was not too much for me!
However
- Moving time: 1:19:36
- Elapsed time: 1:24:17
I frequently get caught by one or both of Farncombe’s level crossings, and sometimes it’s the case that I have to wait for two trains. But this morning… the barriers were down when I first could see them from ~300m away, and I heard the horn of a train that had recently gone through. They stayed down, a second train going through after I’d been paused my watch long enough for it to tell me how well my heart rate had recovered (54bpm in 2 minutes).
The barriers stayed down… for another 60-90 seconds … and then they came up. No third train. I do wonder if the folk in the signalbox had just forgotten about it. YOU’VE GOT ONE JOB.
So yeah. Not non-stop, and I didn’t even run on the spot or do anything else to keep my heart rate up (see above), so not really a legit 14km effort. Whatever.
“Try and be as consistent as possible”
Splits ranges from 5:20/km to 5:49/km, but 5:20/km was an outlier ‘cos I frequently get wide-eyed towards the end of a run. Only four of my kilometres were faster than “conversational” 5:40/km. Smashrun reckons my pace variability was 6%, so pretty solid - especially given traffic crossings and the odd hill here or there.
Overall pace: 5:41/km, 5:38/km grade adjusted.
Post-run
I mean, hmm. I dunno if 5:41/km average is truly conversational, and obviously the fast finish would have made my exhaustion at the end feel especially acute. But I’m happy with running a 14km and I really enjoyed the out and back route to Guildford town centre.
Next week’s long run is 1km longer, and supposed to involve lots of hills and be in progressively faster 3.5km chunks. The paces look thoroughly unreachable inside 7 to 11 days from now. Crazy. I mean I’ll try, but I ain’t happy or confident.
Got home, jealous of how Buster was spending his morning.
