Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Speed is Hard the Day After a Long Run

First off, shout out to a running legend.  Grete Waitz passed away today at the age of 57.  I'd say that she has a claim to fame, but she was a world record holder and won a lot of marathons.  She held records ranging from 3000 meters through the marathon.  'Nough said.  You don't know who she was to the running community of the 70's and 80's?  Yahoo has a good write up and Wikipedia has her best times in one place.


I was hoping the workout was going to be fast and short, so it would be over quickly.  My legs are still sore from yesterday's long run and not fully recharged so to speak.  I wanted to get home and watch the Orlando Magic play the Atlanta Hawks in game 2 of their playoff series, too.

I got out of work late, so I only got one extra lap before we started the regular warmup run.  1.25 miles there.  We stretched and ran 4x100 striders as usual.

The workout was not new.  400, 800, 400.  3 sets.  Since it was hot and humid, coach increased the recovery 15 seconds to 1:15 between reps and the rest between sets from 3 minutes to 4 minutes.  Big thanks on that!  OK.  The first 400 was mile pace.  The 800 was 5k pace.  The second 400 was faster than the first. My goals were 1:30, 3:30, 1:25ish.

I ran the entire first set faster than planned.  That's OK, since I didn't go so hard as to get my arms tingling like I have done in the past.  I ran 1:26, 3:13, 1:23.  My legs were killing me.  I'm not talking about feeling sluggish and heavy.  I'm not talking about muscles even feeling tight.  My patellar (knee) tendons were in a lot of pain and my entire lower leg bones hurt.  It wasn't my shins and it wasn't calves.  Bone is the only thing left.  And that screams shin splints to me.

I already knew at this point that I should have done my long run on Sunday to give myself an extra day of rest.  Too late now.  The second set was right on pace and slightly faster throughout.  On the last set, I missed by 2 seconds on the 400 and 800.  I made the last 400 under time, but I had to dig hard the last 100 of it.  I should have commanded this workout.  I skipped the regular cooldown and rode my bike home.

Oh yeah, the Magic beat the Hawks 88-82 and evened the series.  Next game is Friday night.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

I am just curious.

What was the purpose of the workout that your coach gave you? Its a good tough workout, I just want to know what body system you were trying to train?

Its amazing that someone like Grete could be great for so long. NINE New York City titles. And like many of the athletes from that era - she was a true amateur athlete (even after her school career). She supported her running through her teaching career. Amazing.

Johann said...

For me speed is always hard… Sad about Grete. She was one of my first marathon heroes.

Doug said...

Purpose? I'm not sure exactly. Our coach sometimes tells us what the workout is designed for. Yesterday, he didn't.

What do you mean by body system?

Our group is specifically training for 5k's and 10k's, although some runners split off from time to time to train for marathons. For instance, we had 4 runners from my group run Boston on Monday.