Tuesday, August 09, 2011

Reducing Recovery

A repeat of a session I last did on Sep 15th 2010 here.

After a long 6.4km warm-up and some strides it was showtime.

Just to give the full details of the session - it was 16 x 400m off reducing recoveries - you get 60 seconds recovery between laps 1,2,3,4 and 5. Then 45 seconds between laps 5,6,7,8 and 9. Then 30 seconds between laps 9,10,11,12 and 13 finishing with 15 seconds between laps 13,14,15 and 16. Simple.

The plan was to run them just below target 5km pace (15 minutes for me) so it was agreed that 70 second laps (72 seconds less 2 seconds) should feel "comfortable". Here are my times:

71/70/70/69/70/70/69/69/69/69/69/69/69/71/71/69

It went from feeling relatively easy to bloody hard as soon as the recovery time dropped to 15 seconds (a very cruel mistress). Glad to get the session over with to be honest. A tough old session on the back of Saturday's race.

I finished up with a 3.2km warm-down and that makes it 16.0km for the day. Easy running for the rest of the week except for Thursday where I may do a bit of fartlek training.

5 comments:

David said...

Wow what a sadistic session!
Great performance surely sub 15 potential.

BeerMatt said...

Umm, not sure about sub 15. I have a track 5km a week on Saturday so we shall see...

Sean said...

Good work Matt!

Do you mind if I borrow the format (and adjust for my level!! )

Sean

TokyoRacer said...

Amazing. 30 seconds rest is crazy, 15 seconds is...like no rest at all.

BeerMatt said...

Sean - go for your life. Just try and keep the pace a little quicker than your target 5km.

TokyoRacer - agree, 15 seconds is nothing. I'd stop, look at my watch, and it was time to go again...