Sunday, March 7, 2010

Week 18 summary


Good week. Lighter mileage, about 50 or so. Legs felt good. Quicker paces were easy whether due to lighter mileage or increasing fitness I don't care.
Key workouts this week were:
a 40 minute tempo workout (where I somehow hit the lap key on the Garmin a couple minutes short?) which was supposed to be at 7:15's but felt easy and restrained at 7's
and an interval workout set for 6:45's which ended up nearer to 6:30's. Short intervals: 4:30 on 4 min rest and 3:00 on 2 min rest.










This week is the last 70 mile week between now and Boston. 5 weeks of training left. Booking my flight and getting my passport tomorrow. Things are coming into shape.

There have been a number of posts in the last while about running by feel. Lucho put one up, Kerrie Wlad wrote about training according to feel, Brandon Fuller wrote one about running fast when he felt like it, etc.
I'm hoping for some feedback on this topic because for those who do it well, it sounds like second nature but for those of us who do not it's a bit of a guessing game.
Because there are days that I run OK but feel like crap. And there are days that I feel like crap and run like crap. And there are days when I feel super fresh and can't really get going at all.
And when the training is heavy, I never feel all that great.
So, where does one begin? Can this skill be developed without spending years of running gadget free in the snowy mountains of Colorado? If so, how to start....
Feedback from gadget free, snowy mountain runners is welcome, as is advice from anyone else who has any to offer. I'm in a spot where I've become aware of the limiting effect of seeing those pace splits on the Garmin. That said, like many runners, I like a nice system and I'm a little uptight. After all, this post has three graphs in it!!!

Jamie and I were at the Saskatchewan pavilion for some of the Olympics. We were scheduled to be there on the Sunday of the gold medal men's hockey game until my parents got tickets to the closing ceremonies and we were short one set of babysitters. Thanks Dad!

3 comments:

GZ said...

Put ... the ... Garmin ... down.

Nah. I love my Garmin. I get it. And if we are looking to improve that needs to be something measured.

... but just go without it all sometime.

runninggunner said...

Do it homey. You're almost there.

kerrie said...

i would not let your parents live that down!!!! wasn't that a great game? seriously.

you don't totally have to wean youself off of the garmin...i would just save it for your key sessions.
if you have down on your schedule to run an easy 8 miles, for examples, ditch the garmin and just guesstimate by time how long that should take, and go run for that length of time. sometimes you just need to go through the motions, especially when your training volume is getting high...and it really doesn't matter on those days whether or not you run 8:15 or 7:50 pace...just get'er done!

i also think that when you rely on the garmin too much for pacing, you really lose a sense of what a certain pace feels like. a way to correct this is by running a course(with no garmin) where you have the miles/kms mapped out and check your watch when you go past your mile/km markers to see how close you can come to your estimated, perceived pace.

not too much longer to go!!!!