6 of 16: Changes

Melbourne Marathon 2015 - Week 6 of 16

After five weeks of the program I have decided to recalibrate my training times towards achieving a 3:10 marathon which is an even 4.30m/k pace. I am really confident that I can achieve this time. My long runs are going well and I'm generally running faster than at an equivalent time last year. I am confident of hitting the long run paces and I will use the McMillan pace targets for my intervals as these are a little more generous than Furman (translated: I can actually do these)!

I am adopting the changes from this week and will monitor this for the next month to see how I am going.

Tuesday 4 August

First up session with the new times was a track set. Today I was working from home which gave me the opportunity to head out for a late lunch down to the Moorabbin Athletic Track (G R Bricker Reserve). It's a fairly desolate place down there and I have almost never seen another runner, just the odd person walking their dog ... off the leash which drives me nuts but that's another story!

Today was another cold and windy day in Melbourne and I didn't really warm up too much for the whole session. It was a stiff headwind in one direction down the back straight and a tailwind home. I'm not sure this cancels out and it certainly felt hard.

The set was 2x 1200m in 4.31-47 (McMillan gives a range) and 4x 800 in 2.57-3.05, all with a 2 minute rest interval. My target, given there is a range of times, is to be somewhere in the middle. The 1200's were remarkably even (and in the middle!) at 4.38 and 4.37. They were comfortably hard, the long rest was appreciated. On to the 800's and I should be able to run under 3 mins, but ran these in 3.01/05/05/02, so on target but slower than I'd hope.

All things considered, this was a good start to my revised plan. Yippee!

Wednesday 5 August

This week at Nike+ Run Club I was able to run once again with one of my favourite pace groups - the 10k 5m30s group, this time with Vanessa as co-leader. We had a crew of over 20 with many regular faces which makes for a great atmosphere. As part of the Zoom Boom campaign we are running a variety of different paces within each run. Tonight, after the warm up, was 1 min harder/1 min easier then 2h/2e and so on up to 5h/5e. Of the harder bits we were normally around 15s/km faster than the target average pace of 5.30, so somewhere around 5.15.

After completing this series of efforts we re-grouped at the top of Anderson Street for our "magic mile" which I think a lot of people have come to enjoy. The way I approach this is to run near the front and try to encourage and cajole people along at whatever pace they wish to do. For a 5.30 group, this team was fast and we cranked out a mile in 7 min (4.20 pace). Just wow!!

Once again, I was a very happy and proud run leader, as these folks continue to extend themselves.

Thursday 6 August

Today's session was an 8k tempo run with a target pace of 4.14. After completing a shorter 6k effort last week at 4.10 pace I expected this one to be manageable. I decided to run up and down on the north side of the Yarra, thus avoiding a road crossing and likely traffic light stop at Chapel Street. After a 1k warm up the plan was to run at 4.18-19 on the way out then pick it up and run 4.09-10 on the way back. Simples!

Outbound I was right on pace with 4.18/21/18/19 for those k's. I was aware that this did not feel especially easy and feared I was running with whatever wind there was behind me. Turning around and the next km was also in 4.19 though this is over the 'undulating' part of the course so I thought was ok. But when I tried to pick up the pace there was nothing. My legs felt flat and empty and had no zip at all. The next couple of km's were in 4.24 and 4.22 so I was going backwards and when I tried to run a really hard last km it only came out as a 4.26. This was so depressing and I finished the 8k at the ordinary average of 4.21.

I took the unprecedented step of getting on the foam roller on Thursday night (I'm not really a fan of that thing) and am desperately trying to recover something ahead of Sunday's City to Surf.

Sunday 9 August

Today was my 28th City to Surf and after the disastrous run I had on Thursday I was not confident on how I'd go. As it turned out I had a very good race, slightly slower than last year but still under one hour which is a fantastic time for me.

I have posted a separate race report for this event.


Training Program:
Full session details for my whole training plan here.

Strava links for the week:
Tuesday - G R Bricker 10.1k @5.12; 2x 1200m and 4x800m
Wednesday - Nike Run Club 10.0 @5.25; incl 1-2-3-4-5 harder/easier and magic mile.
Thursday - Tempo 8 10.0 @4.31; incl 8k @4.21
Sunday - City to Surf 13.95k @4.16; hard race!

Summary:
Week 6 of 16 (this week): 4 runs, 44.1 km, 3 hrs 31 mins
Week 5 of 16: 4 runs, 53.3 km, 4 hrs 21 mins
Week 4 of 16: 5 runs, 65.8 km, 5 hrs 38 mins
Week 3 of 16: 4 runs, 58.3 km, 4 hrs 46 mins
Week 2 of 16: 4 runs, 52.4 km, 4 hrs 30 mins
Week 1 of 16: 4 runs, 50.1 km, 4 hrs 11 mins
Total: 25 runs, 323.9 km, 26 hrs 59 mins