So now the countdown begins. This week has been crazy busy with an 1.5 hour long presentation to prepare for for my sport nutritional aids class, and a midterm on the same day in my Molecular Basis of Cancer course. As the professor said as he was handing out the exam, "don't worry about showing me your IDs, cause I doubt that you have any friends you would be willing to write this exam for you," - Just fills you with confidence doesn't it. But anyways I rocked both, and was able to fit my training in perfectly. On Sunday, I did my last long run - a 37 and a bit kilometers with the last half hour at or close to race pace. On Monday hill repeats (found a new hill about 5k from house - just awesome); Tuesday a 15k Cutdown where the goal is to beat your last split for 15 consecutive 1km splits. This was such a great workout: started nice and easy at 4min/km pace then cutdown to 3:55, 3:53, 3:49, all the way to finishing at 3:27 for the 15 splits. Even though you might say well for me 3:27 is slighty slower than half marathon pace the workout is harder then it sounds. Personally, I find it easier to just go out on a tempo run and hammer 3:25 for 14k or whatever because you get locked into that pace and the body becomes accustomed to it. It is what Jack Daniels (the marathon coach not the No.7 whiskey) calls you T zone - or a cruise interval. Basically you are working "comfortably hard" which equates to an elite runners half marathon pace. Basically you are running at a pace that you could keep for 60 minutes. So for your untrained runner a 60 minute effort may equate to 10k pace (6min pace). The reason I find the cutdown workout a little harder is because you have no time to really get use to the specific pace (since the whole workout is accelerating) and after running at a "slower" pace it makes it a little more difficult to kick it up when needed- basically what I'm saying is that those last few splits feel really fast because compared to the first few they are around 30 seconds faster. As you could imagine this workout has alot of benefits first and foremost being to teach your mind and body to get fast as the race progresses (run a negative split). I should mention in order to do this workout you should invest in a good GPS watch - preferably Garmin since it is designed for hardcore workouts and because it gives you a number of features necessary for completing workouts like these like giving you what the avg lap pace in addition to current pace whereas watches like the Nike GPS only give current. For this workout you need the avg pace for that split. Also just to go off on the Garmin tangent a little more, on the garmin you can design advanced workouts like warmup followed by however many intervals based on distance or time, what rest to have in between each and cooldown. Here's an example (at the bottom of post) of one workout that I've done probably 5 or 6 times throughout the last 5 months. As you're running the watch will countdown to each telling you when to start/stop, how many left, paces, heart rate, etc.
So that was Tues, Wednesday did hour and a half in the morning. Today hammered out 8 mile repeats at 10k pace 3:10/km (5:08/mile). Basically, the goal of these workout isn't to gain fitness or increase VO2 max, lactate threshold, etc. Quite frankly, in the last couple weeks you aren't going to improve your fitness at all. The hope is that during the however many months training for the marathon you have got in all of the key marathon specific workout you need to be ready for the race. This would include your long tempo runs 12-13 mile range, your T zone intervals: workout like 4 by 3 miles at half marathon pace, your long runs, pure speed workouts like 400 repeats or 200s, your golden Yasso 800s for lactate threshold and clearance training, and the list goes on and on. Essentially the last two weeks is just about maintaining that high level of fitness (a perfect mix between speed and endurance) that you have worked so hard to achieve. You may ask, "Well if your not going to gain any fitness why do the mile repeats or the cutdown or the tempo run (tomorrow night with my Dad on the bike pacing me, after a steady run in morning)." The answer is that is has to do with muscle memory and arriving to the start line with some pop in the legs. If you were to just chill during the last two weeks cutting your mileage and various workouts out of the mix, just running easy, your going to a: get to the start line feeling sluggish, b: that race pace that you dreamed about holding is going to feel damn hard from the start. You have to keep the intensity up, in fact in the last couple weeks you actually want to do higher intensity workouts more frequently. The idea is that you learn to really feel that pace and maintain the fast leg turnover - you are programming your legs to lock into that marathon pace.
- Warm Up 2 km None
- Recovery 2 km None
- Recovery 2 km None
- Recovery 1 km None
- Cool Down 2 km None
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