Major Abort

Just a quick note on my post from this morning in reference to my run on words: while on vacation I read a biography of Cicero (which was very good, BTW) and in there I learned that "books" from that period (first century BC) were written on long scrolls with no punctuation, no capital letters, no paragraphs or spacing. I can't imagine reading a sentence, let alone a whole book, in that format!

Anyway, to the task at hand...

The plan called for speed work today, and so off to the track I went with two things in mind. Number 1: I've been reading about the importance of step-back weeks in marathon training and that these are supposed to occur after every 4 weeks or so of hard training. This would make this a bit late for me, but looking at my training I've been adding mileage in a up a little, down a little, repeat type approach. Therefore, I've decided to step back not so much on the mileage, but rather on the intensity (at least for the intervals, or so I thought). And that leads me to point Number 2: I've also read something on the Runner's World Forum (in the 3:15 BQ thread since I, too, can dream) that interval pacing, no matter what distance, should be consistent.

Does everyone agree with this? What I take from this is if I am running mile repeats at 4:00/km pace (my theoretical VO2 Max pace based on a 45 minute 10k result), then my 400m repeats should also be at this pace, as well as 800s, 1000s, 1200s, etc... I've done 400m repeats at a faster rate before, so I figured to do them again at this slightly slower pace (roughly 1:37 per repeat) should actually feel rather easy. After all, last week's speed workout saw me run three one-mile repeats at this pace. Getting rest after every quarter-mile should help to make everything go smoothly, I reasoned.

I decided to run 12X400m repeats with about a minute of recovery between each. Rather than stand and wait out the rest (like I did in the heat and humidity about a month ago), I decided to jog slowly 200m between each rep.

Here is how I fared in the overcast and nicely temperatured climes of my local high school track:

1. 1:34.74 (3:53/km)
2. 1:34.45 (3:55/km)
3. ...
4. ...
5. ...
6. ...
7. ...
8. ...
9. ...
10. ...
11. ...
12. ...

As you can see, this was a good workout, but 10 REPEATS TOO SHORT! Just when I was beginning to think that marathon training, though tough, is a reasonable endeavor for someone missing a ligament in the old ankle to attempt, something completely out of the blue stops me in my tracks. Towards the end of the second lap I felt a twinge in the right calf similar to what I experienced at the beginning of March whilst completing my first ever 24km training run. The only way to describe it is to say that it felt like a major cramp had come and gone and all that was left was the lingering after effects. I stopped and stretched for a bit, then got up and tried jogging, but to no avail. I ended up walking home very much disappointed in this turn of events.

I have no idea why this happened. If this was the result of this past weekend's race then one would think that my Monday recovery run would leave me hobbled. If my near crash after Friday's run (where I really felt spent and I'm sure my muscles were completely out of energy stores) is the culprit then why didn't my calf tighten up during the race? Let's just say I am almost as upset with the fact that I don't know what caused this and, therefore, am powerless to prevent it as I am with the calf issue itself.

In the end I ran a total of 3.1km (2k warm up, 2 intervals at 400m with 200m easy jog in between, and a feeble attempt at more jogging for another 100m or so) in 16:35 for an average pace of 5:22/km. 'Nuff said.

Garmin don't lie.