Wednesday, February 23, 2011

The dreaded 4 lappers

A 6.4km warm-up before some drills and strides. Conditions a little windy around the final bend and finishing straight but not too bad. I wasn't looking forward to this - the plan was to run them at the same pace as my 800's from 2 weeks previous so that meant 5 minutes per effort (round numbers). I had the luxury of 90 seconds recovery which was plenty to start with, but much needed come the business end.

As always with this type of session, I use the first one as a barometer. Run it at a very honest pace and hope that's enough to get you somewhere near the target. If you hit the first one it's a good sign that the session will go well. Miss it and it's going to be a struggle.

Well tonight I had a very good night. Times went as follows:

5:01,4:58,4:56,4:58,4:59

That's my quickest set of 1600's by a long chalk. See below - note all of these were done off 60 seconds recovery so maybe that makes a big difference:

Jun 30th 2010 - 5:19,5:14,5:15,5:10,5:06
Aug 4th 2010 - 5:13,5:12,5:11,5:11,5:09,5:07
Aug 17th 2010 - 5:10,5:10,5:09,5:08,5:08,5:01
Sep 30th 2010 - 5:08,5:07,5:06,4:59
Nov 17th 2010 - 5:34,5:22,5:20,5:20,5:21,5:23
Jan 12th 2011 - 5:22,5:16,5:14,5:14,5:08

Tonight I was running a quick first lap (approx 72 seconds). Then cruising the middle 2 laps before cranking up the pace again the last lap. Not sure if you are supposed to run them at even pace for maximum training benefit - who knows? Anyway, I felt good throughout and always felt like I had another gear.

I finished up with 11 laps warm-down. All up 18.8km for the night.

Hopefully this form translates into a good time on Sunday. Assuming it's a flat course I would like to break 26 minutes.

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