S2S 5k - Week 4

Monday
Rest day.

Tuesday
5.44 miles total. Warm up of 1.5 miles followed by just shy of a mile of technique drills. For each technique drill there was the drill itself, a short jog, a quick stride, and a short walk. Then I would start the next drill. The drills were followed by a 3 miles run at 9:00 pace.

Wednesday
5.66 miles at recovery pace (9:41, aiming for anywhere between 9:22 and 10:04).

Thursday
5x3:00 at 5KE followed by 3:00 of recovery. With a 2 mile warm up and a 2 mile cool down this workout totaled 7.1 miles. Average pace for reps was 6:40.

This workout was brutal. It just wasn't my day. I felt fine when I was starting my workout, but a minute into the third rep everything started to fall apart. My arms and shoulders hurt while pumping my arms, which has never happened. The cold wind was making breathing so difficult even though I had taken my inhaler. I tried to just focus on form and getting through the workout the best that I could. It was a very frustrating workout.

Friday
Rest day.

Saturday
11.34 miles with an average pace of 9:10. After dropping out of my long run last week and really struggling through my long run the week before, I was determined to make this long run a good one. And it was! I felt great the entire time!

I usually do my long runs on Sundays, but there was a marathon/half marathon on Sunday that used part of my usual long run route. I didn't want to be in the way so I just moved it to Saturday. This also allowed me to do my long run after a rest day, which probably contributed to how great it felt.

Sunday
5.66 miles with an average pace of 9:44 (like Wednesday my target was my recovery pace).

Total miles: 35.1

Noticeably missing from this week: injury prevention work! Completely my fault so I won't bother trying to come up with excuses. I am already planning my Monday night to make sure I don't skip it two weeks in a row.

On a less disappointing note: this is my highest mileage week of the year (so far)! Aiming for another 35+ miles next week.

S2S 5k - Week 3

Monday
Supposed to be injury prevention day, but my laziness took over and this turned into a rest day.

Tuesday
5x2:00 at 5KE followed by 3:00 of recovery. With a 2 mile warm up and a 2 mile cool down this workout totaled 7.1 miles.

Wednesday
4.1 miles extra easy. Last week I ended up running some hilly routes on my easy days and it lead to some very cranky legs. Not wanting to repeat that mistake, I stuck to a mostly flat route and kept the pace very slow.

Thursday
Hill repeats: 8x60s uphill with 4 minutes of active recovery in between. The last couple hill repeats were rough, but somehow I managed to finish them all. Total distance for the day was 4.72 miles. I was planning on a longer cool down, but needed to cut it short.

Friday
The guilt of skipping Monday's injury prevention work caught up with me around 9:30 pm Friday night. I ended up doing core and leg strengthening, foam rolling, and a short yoga session. Definitely patting myself on the back for doing this workout instead of going straight to bed (yes, 9:30 on a Friday night is an appropriate bed time, and yes, I am that cool).

Saturday
Another short, easy run. At the beginning of my run I ended up finding one of my runner friends on the trail so we chatted for first half of my run. Having company made it easy to keep the pace light and conversational. 5.18 miles

Sunday
I went into my long after a night of too many drinks and too little sleep. I was surprised that I actually felt decent during the run. My legs were tired and my mind was not at all into running, but I was out there getting it done. After about 5 miles I decided that was probably enough for the day. I pushed through a difficult long run last weekend and this weekend I was just not up for powering through. I ended up with 6.43 miles.

I'm trying not to be disappointed that I bailed on my long run yesterday. Even though I was running similar mileage in January and February, I was running almost all easy miles. At most I would get in two quality workouts (on speed session and one long run). This training plan has 3 quality sessions per week; it makes sense that I am feeling tired. I am hoping that cutting back a bit this week will allow me to move into week 4 feeling strong.

Total miles: 27.53

Figuring out 5k effort

My training plan calls for time based repetitions run at "5k effort," and it turns out that I am really struggling to figure out exactly what pace that might be. I know that I have mentioned the article "Solving the 5K Puzzle" about a million times, but since it is the basis for my training plan, expect to keep hearing about it for the next 8 weeks.

The author indicates that these effort based repetitions should be run at paces based on my current fitness, not the fitness I hope to have at the end of the training period. My most recent 5k was completed in 22:15, or about a 7:10 pace. That was raced the day after a 10 mile training run, so it is possible that I am a little bit faster now.

22:15 was fast enough for an age group award!

For my first set of 5k efforts (5KEs) I tried to run a bit faster than usual, but not crazy fast. I calculated that I was running at a 6:56 pace. I was supposed to run 5 reps, but I felt like it was too easy and ended up doing a couple extra. I decided to try to run a bit faster the following week. During week two I ended up running around a 6:22 pace. This was WAY too fast and I definitely paid for it for the rest of the week.

The truth is I really don't know how to pace myself at paces below 7:00. Part of this makes me want to panic. The best way to get a 5k PR will be to run even splits or slightly negative splits. If I can't figure out how to pace myself during the 1-2 miles, I am going to run out of speed before the finish line. Fortunately Hanna shared some very timely wisdom on her blog this week:

“it’s okay – my body is still learning.”

This is completely new running territory for me right now and it is okay if I can't perfectly execute every run on my training plan. When I trained for my first couple half marathons, I ran every long run as fast as I could. Now I know better. And by the time I have gone through this training plan a few times, I will be able to control my speed instead of trying to run each rep as fast as possible.

For week 3 I decided to give myself a little bit of help finding the right pace. I knew that I wanted to run a bit faster than 6:56 and slower than 6:22. I decided that aiming for 6:45 would be a good middle ground. Since I would be running for 2 minutes, I knew I needed to cover about .3 miles. I found a nice stretch of paved trail that was the right distance and set out to cover it 5 times with 3 minutes of recovery between reps.

My reps were 2:05, 2:07, 2:00, 2:00, 2:02

Average pace: 6:49. A tiny, tiny bit slower than intended, but the first three had a pretty strong headwind, so I'm really not bothered. I finished feeling like I could have gutted out one more rep, but I was glad that I didn't have to. Hopefully this means I was close to the right pace. I'm going to use this strategy for running the rest of my 5KEs and, hopefully, come race day I will know what I am doing.

If anyone has any better ideas for running this type of workout, please let me know! As I've mentioned, this is the first time I am following a 5k specific plan and could use any advice that is out there!