Happily Ever After
Life in The Rural Retreat with a beautiful wife, three cats, garden wildlife, a camera, a computer – and increasing amounts about running
Earlier posts can be found on Adventures of a Lone Bass Player, where this blog began life. Recent entries can be found here.
Baffled
by Russell Turner - 21:19 on 17 August 2022
That’s Week 10 of London Marathon training done. It’s been a strange one: two mixed sessions of tempo plus intervals or hills and one steady run, all of which went to plan, concluding with a long run that didn’t.
Last week’s 14-mile long run, in the heat, was a reasonably comfortable 4:1 run/walk at 11:16min/mile pace; today’s 13 miles (which should have been 16), on a much cooler day, was an extremely uncomfortable 5:1 r/w at 11:17 pace. Very disappointing. And baffling. It felt so much tougher than last week that I was amazed to find the pace was almost identical.
Why? Maybe it was the effect of yesterday’s tempo when last week’s equivalent had been a shorter easy run. Or slightly more ascent. Or poor hydration before the run. Or a bit of all of them. I could have struggled on and reached 14, 15 or even 16 miles but I was bored, dispirited and my feet hurt. It didn’t seem worth the effort.
Also baffling is that, despite the exertion, my average heart rate was a paltry 119bpm – just inside the top end of the warm-up zone – with a maximum of 131. Last week it was 124 and 139. This will be of great concern to Matchgirl who’s warned me that a too-low HR can be a symptom of something nasty like bradycardia, although my resting rate is a perfectly normal 55-60.
Next week’s long run is supposed to be 13 miles so I’ll do a swap and go for 16. However, in a radical shake-up of the training plan, I’ll reduce five runs a week to four and take a rest day before long runs. You’ve got to be flexible.
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