December 5th, 2009
I really don’t enjoy pain, it’s not something I search out, but perhaps I have a closeted need for self-flagellation because I sure kicked my ass painfully yesterday.
The week was going pretty well, I had a couple of fun runs on Wed and Thurs, feeling all recovered and pretty peppy. Looking at the calendar, I was eyeing a 5k on the 19th and even figured out a little schedule with 4 quality days between now and then; one this week, then a tempo and speed next week and a speed session that following Tuesday, the week of the race. Sounded like a good plan for ending the year with a PR.
So yesterday, I decided to do some 800s (1/2 miles actually), 6 of them @6:30 w/90sec recoveries. What a nice change it’d be to do shorter intervals again and it would get me back to seeing what 5K pace is supposed to feel like.
Worst fucking idea ever.
It was the hardest speed session I’ve ever had – the first 3 reps averaged 6:40, I just could not go faster. By the 4th, I’d basically quit with a 6:55, the 5th was a laggardly 7:08 and I bagged the 6th completely. Never had such a bad session.
I get home and look at my logs, noting that back in April, I did this exact workout perfectly and with a lower HR. Anyone within 5 miles of me would have now begun to hear the thwack, thwack of me caning myself full-on. “Oh no I’m regressing, something’s not right here…”
Luckily, I have my Sub 3:20 thread friends who assured me that I was a complete dodo for even attempting such a workout so soon after a marathon. Then today, my blogging friend Joe Garland confirmed this by sharing his own recovery rule handed down from a 2:14 marathoner friend: no hard running for 26 days after a marathon. Thus, a miserable attempt at 5k pace only 12 days out was no surprise to anyone but me.
In my own misguided defense, I thought I could handle it because I didn’t actually run the whole of Philly (having walked probably 3.5 miles worth) and my legs were feeling normal already. But The Body, she is a complicated machine, and legs that feel fine don’t tell the full story.
So forget the 5k, I don’t want to risk a bad race. I just wish I wasn’t so impatient with myself! I need to trust that running well takes time and experience and that I can’t push it out like a hard turd just because I want it all NOW! This is a learning process that requires discovering and respecting limitations, even if I like to pretend I don’t have any.
So…Limits, meet Flo, Flo, these are your limits – now put the cane away. Masochism is overrated anyway.
And this concludes lesson #46.2 of Know Thy Runner Self. Perhaps a safe word won’t be necessary, after all. Thwack. I stand corrected.
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Your bad-run reports are quite fun to read, though.
Speaking of our 3:20 buddies, is RWOL down or is it this horrible hotel cumputer? I wanted to see how SP got on today.
Jim, CIM racing man!!! SP got himself a BQ with a 3:32! Fabulous. As for you speedy fella, enjoy the evening. Are you meeting up for an FE dinner or taking a solo meal with Cathi?
Whoohoo! Well done SP! I’d forgotten he was in my AG.
I’m flying solo this time, as Cathi has a music gig this evening. Foolishly didn’t set up an FE, so the action plan is:
1. Find and consume much pasta
2. Go to bed
3. Get up and tumble downstairs into a bus that will be right outside at 5 AM
4. Do some other thing (It’ll come to me, involves running I think.)
Well I’m just thinking about you having the race of your life tomorrow. I keep seeing 3:12 in my head, but no pressure. Good luck finding a good restaurant, I could look at the Cali forum and find out where everybody is, if you’d want to bother. But maybe a solo night left to your own devices will be meditative and soothing. Thinking about you. Just wish you guys weren’t 3 hours behind, I’m going to be dying waiting for the race to start! :-)
It’s tough to be patient. That’s too bad that the speed session didn’t go well, but it was just a training run. You’re allowed a few bad ones now and then. I won’t give advice on the 5K because I don’t feel like I’ve been running long enough to give other people advice. But, what I’ll do instead is tell you that last year I ran a 5 mile race 4 days after my disaster in Philly, got a huge PR, and distracted myself (even if only briefly) from the dissapointment from the marahton. The lousy trianing run doesn’t necessarily mean that the 5K would be lousy too…
I think that’s the 20 years between us showing. No way in hell could I race anything now, much less 4 days after the marathon. And if I can’t work towards getting my speed back asap, then I don’t want to chance another bust…one sucky race per season is enough. Ah, to be a 20-something guy like you – resiliency in abundance.
Hi Flo, Still having limited Internet here. Cant even get to the CIM tracker to see how I did, but my watch has 3:17:33. The negative split didnt happen because of a wicked headwind in the second half. I was coooold – and I wasn’t the only one. It was shiver city at the finish. I dug pretty deep after mile 20, and now I’m all ruined, hobbling around like the people in that “day after the marathon” video. But hey, it didnt rain!
Jim!! WOOHOO!!! We were all tracking you and thrilled with your result! You’ll have left already but if you haven’t, CIM said 3:18:09. Sub 3:20, uh huh!! Can’t wait for the report. Hugs!
Good advice from Joe. Hope you received it before welts started appearing from all that caning. Enjoy your days of ‘no hard running’ while they last
Are we really runners if we don’t test the limits sometimes? LOL. 26 days? Really? Hhhmm… so that 1/2 marathon this weekend might be a bad idea for me? FWIW, I start doing a few *little* workouts 14 days later.
Ewen, lol! The welts have gone down considerably in the last couple days, thank you. ;-)
LA, good luck on the Half! Won’t that be 4 weeks since your marathon, so 28 days? And you know your racing self very intimately by now and what you can handle, plus you’re a young ‘un like Robert (who just PRd a 10k 2 weeks after Philly) so I bet you’ll PR bigtime.
“little” workout is what I should have gone for, instead of 5k with 90 sec intervals (which to me is a “full” workout). I hadn’t done 5k pace in a couple months, so it was more of a surprise than I could handle.
“But The Body, she is a complicated machine, and legs that feel fine don’t tell the full story.”
A gem. I kind of understood this already, but hadn’t really thought about it clearly before.
Thanks.
Fyi sorry my camera needs batteries so I’ll try and get that pic to you in the next few days
Rovatti, you give me too much credit (but I’ll take it)
runforlife, no hurry at all. Whenever you get to it is cool.