Tuesday, September 16, 2008

good feel

this morning I had my best workout in months...
- 27C(78F)/80% rh
- Shoes Mizuno Elixir 3 (a great model, good for both longhish runs and fast pace)
- slept too little, but felt ok anyway.
The program was to run 24km in progression at 8k steps: 8k at 70-75% HRmax, 8k at 78%-60% and the final 8k at MP pace/effort (target is 3'40"/km and 85/86%HRmax).

It was really magic night (still) , the moon was perfectly round and shining on the west, while the sun was ready to rise from the East...
I hit these paces:
- 8k at about 4'10"/km . I felt incredibly easy and the HR was really low, even lower than 140...
- 8k at 3'50"/km pace: it felt amazingly easy. The HR was steady at 155-156 (78%/79% of HRmax) and I could have gone on forever... I was guessing that I could be capable to run a marathon in 2h45' as "easy" effort...
-last 8k at 3'40"/km: I hit the pace perfectly and the HR was in target until the last 2km. I guess the HR drift was due to the sun already shining on my already half tired legs, but overall the pace felt quite comfortable. Never felt the "2h35m marathon" as likely as today. I have it in my legs, I need to tune up the feeling at 3'40" speed in order to find the best stride (today I made some experiments with faster stride versus lower cadence but longer stride...)

5 comments:

RICK'S RUNNING said...

Its great when every thing clicks into place and you can see the results of all your hard work!
Guess you were in that magic Zone we all search for, when running fast feels effortless and the miles float by like clouds in the sky on bright breezy day!

Simone said...

Nice workout, one of those that keep the willingness to run high and the willingness to improve your time even higher.

I like to keep this kind of training in mind, to remind me .. I can do that time in marathon ... I know because of that training.

About cadence and stride length after your few post time ago I was checking some of my races, I'll definitely write a few lines about it soon!

by7 said...

I guess that running with the Mizuno Elixir gave me 3-4"/km advantage compared to running in the Asics Kayano...

last Sunday I struggled much more to run in 3'40"... so it was a very positive sign.

But most of all, it was the 3'50" stage that was amazing: I was only at "medium" endurance effort and the pace would have been unthinkable to hold only for 10k not later than 2.5 years ago...

For almost 10 years I trained poorly and not consistently and making a half marathon faster than 1h20' was an elusive dream... today I passed the 21k mark in 1h21' as training run...

by7 said...

Simone,

i suggest you the following homeworks with Polar SW
a) check also the average cadence during the past years for all your workouts

b) cadence and stride length for some key race

c) running index trend

Simone said...

ok, I have to care about that, I had the SD no properly calibrated for a while for some shoe, so I have really to extract the reliable values.
but for sure I will extract a valuable set of important workouts and races.

On the average I sow my cadence is faster than your (94-96 in marathons) and my stride length smaller (136-142) ... I'm sure the BMI has a role in that!!!