21 November 2008

Week 2 of 4 (10k SCSM)

I am in Melbourne between Saturday and Wednesday to see the doctor and hospitals for the baby. Plan to run on alternate days, hence mileage will be lower this week and next week.

Too bad I can’t stay until the weekend to run/watch the Great Australian Race where Mottram and Gebrelassie will be racing the 15K. Ran the race route today with my brother in law and his friend who are running next Sunday. We started at Albert Park, towards the city, one lap of the Tan and back at slow relaxing pace. Nice flat route.

On the local news front, Luke Kibet, the 2007 World Champs marathon winner has confirmed that he will be running Singapore Marathon this year. This is great news for Singapore. He is probably the highest profile runner (2:08 PB) ever to race here. Beijing Olympic womens marathon winner Dita-Tomescu also ran a couple of Singapore marathons but that was before she became famous.

On the training front, I did 70k with 2 main workouts:

1) Intervals: 4 x 1000m @ 5k effort, 400m jog (aborted)

The plan was to do 5x1000m with one lap jog for recovery, but could only complete four reps. I thought that I could comfortably do1000m reps at my old 5k PB pace (53 VDOT) with around 2:30 jog, but I was dead wrong. The effort felt hard and I was straining, hence I decided to call it quits. Splits were: 3:44, 3:43, 3:45, and 3:42. I think I was over ambitious and the recovery time was on the short side for a runner at my level.

This just shows that how my running friends in Perth are in top form at the moment. Both Clown ad Epi ran a couple of 1600s at 3:30 ish pace with 3mins rest and the time for 1600m of alternating 100m fast, 100m jog was also faster than my 10k pace intervals (they did it on grass too!!). You guys need to teach me how to run fast !!

2) Intervals: 5 x 1600m @ 10k effort, 400m jog

Ran 5k warm up to the SMU track including 4 x 30secs strides (a couple were downhill ones for leg turnover). Felt lousy at the start and did the first one in 6:13. The next one was even slower in 6:18 and was actually close to my tempo pace. I realized that my running form wasn’t great and decided to run with a higher ankle lift. This seemed to make a difference and I was able to complete the next 3 reps in 6:09, 6:10, and 6:05 (last 150m kick). Average pace for all 5 was 3:52 min/km, av HR 173 with a high of 184 bpm. Felt toast at the end but happy to be able to squeeze in 8k worth of race pace intermittent running a couple of weeks before the 10K. Now I wish if only I could run 10k continuosly at that pace !!

Mon: 8k Recovery (av 5:15)
Tue: 2k wu, 4x 1000m (av 3:44) with 400m jogs, 2k cd
Wed: 12k Easy (av 5:11)
Thu: 6k Recovery (av 5:28)
Fri: 5k wu, 5 x 1600m (av 3:52) with 400 jogs, 5k cd
Sat: Fly to Melbourne
Sun: 15k Easy (av 5:30)

Total 70k for the week

3 comments:

Epi said...

Clown and I have been discussing that interval/speed sessions are much easier in a group. I am sure that if you were running with us, you'd be right next to me (and just in front of Clown ;)

Clown said...

Welcome back to Aust for short time, pity you're not coming to Perth. Def agree that intervals are a lot easier in a group. Impressive effort doing 2 interval sessions, make sure that you don't kill yourself in those sessions.

Ewen said...

Yes, running in a group lets you forget about splits - you can just concentrate on keeping up.

Maybe try some long recovery sessions with these occasionally. In the old days we used to do a lot of 3 or 5 x 1k at 3k race-pace (or quicker) off 7 or more minutes. We'd just walk/jog/walk rest for 4 minutes.

It'll be interesting to see how Mottram goes with the new coach.