Week 10 –

Typical Trowbidge carnage (via @NDCTBay twitter)

“I just closed my eyes, held my breath, and hammered.”

That, remains one of the best quotes I have ever heard about how bad a person was hurting. It makes no sense, but it fully encapsulates what it is like to be completely invested in an effort.

Ryan said this, no one else could come up with something so insightful, concise and raw. He’s never short for wisdom on how to dig deep, and his ability to go all-in is something I respect immensely.

Oftentimes though, pushing hard can be the undoing of a race, your own efforts washing away results. As most athletes have experienced first hand….

Racing is a competition, a competition between competitors, and it’s about beating the competition to the line. A best effort does not necessarily mean suffering the most, but rather suffering the most effectively.

Suffer effectively, and suffer the fastest. That’s how the best racing is done. Manage your effort, and be ready for when you have to close your eyes, hold your breath, and just hammer.

//

4-3-3 striding intensity – 12 October 2015

A classic TBay striding workout at the Trowbridge hill in Centennial Park. Depending on the athlete, the number of intervals would change, but everyone does the same hill and in the same pattern.

On this particular Thanksgiving Monday, my prescription was 4-3-3 (approx. 28min working time), effort increasing from Z3 to Z4 to survival mode with each change in technique. The technique is primarily what dictates the intensity…

Meaning intervals 1-4 were skiwalking at high Z3, 5-7 were skiwalking the steep and striding the gradual parts at ANT+/Z4, then 8-10 were striding the whole hill at however hard you can manage them at.

Ski walking/striding intervals are one of the hardest things ever. I don’t miss this kind of suffering. As lame and bizarre as it may look to the casual observer, these workouts require practice to do well and are absolutely brutal.

Interval. Time, AVG/MAX HR (lactate)
1. 3:09, 163/175
2. 3:09, 170/182
3. 3:07, 174/186
4. 3:09, 173/187 (4.6)
5. 2:45, 177/195
6. 2:46, 178/195
7. 2:46, 178/197 (8.0)
8. 2:36, 178/198
9. 2:37, 179/199
10. 2:32, 182/199 (11.9)
Rest was walk/jog down ~ 2.5-3minutes, HR dropping to 120-135.

Legs were still feeling the Sawdust race from Saturday. Lactates high for how hard I felt like I was going… In this intensity and the Sawdust it has felt relatively easy to push harder/maintain a high effort without it “feeling hard”. Makes me think there’s acute fatigue in the legs/body from these hard sessions, but as part of the entire system it feels like I’m in a pretty good place within training cycles.

Anyway, on intervals 5-7 (walk/stride) striding on the flatter sections felt pretty good, but switching back to skiwalk is when my legs felt the fatigue. It felt like I could push pretty well walking/striding set. The striding set wasn’t very snappy, I was taking it pretty easy up the first section so I could (sort of) stride all the way up, but still bogging down. Just not super good at extended striding intervals I guess