Sub 36 in 10K

[TheEd]

Hi Albert, I am hoping you having a good time and that you come back refreshed and rearing to go, even if you do fit some sessions in

enjoy the weekend

TheEd

[Albert83BCN]

Hi there coach

Well, it has been a week already since I came back from Paris and I guess it's time for some updates.

I must say that the little break has done me more bad than good. I only trained two days out of 9 during this time, one 1h easy run and a 1h30' at 4:30 avg pace for a total of 20K, a very nice training visiting the most emblematic places of Paris: Champs Elysees, Arc du Triomph, Tour Eiffel, Invalides, Nôtre Dame.. it was a very enjoyable run. Despite of this, I must say that we were all day long walking and doing tourism which was pretty tiring in its own way so It really wasn't much time to train and I even think that may had been counter-productive.

I don't think that training only two days may have had a hard impact on performance, but the problem is that I thought that after half a year training and dieting hard maybe I would deserve a little reward, so these days I eat whataver I enjoyed (and that includes mostly sweets and chocolates) and I think that this is what it had the hardest impact on performance, because on other ocasions I also noticed that if any day had an excess in food the next day I'd feel drowsy and gain weight fast. In fact, I weighted 65 when I came back, that was 2 kg more than when I left and I was already on a slightly-high edge (when I feel more in shape I'm between 60 and low 62).

So, in order to prove this, see: the first to days I ate well and recorded morning HR more or less consistent (between 46-48 avg), but after a few days releasing myself I started recording higher HRs every day until I reached 60-66 avg!! As for the general feelings, I felt well during the whole travel but when I came back I tried to resume training and everything has been pretty bad.

Last Tuesday I tried to run the 6x1000 on the mill (since the track is still only available until 6PM and can't train with so much heat) and tried to stick with the 3:30 pace and only could do two intervals, I left the 3rd one at 800m and call it a day. Then on Saturday I had been processing the pictures and I didn't feel like I wanted to run the 5K paced, so I skipped it. This Monday's 1h easy on the mill was done at 5:10 pace and avg 154 bpm, highest 162 when I was doing it a month or two ago at 5:00 144 avg... and finally yesterday I did the 10x400 on the street in a very well measured and flat zone where I trained sometimes before going to the track. I did the fastest one in 1:17 and the slowest in 1:21, avg 1:18, at full effort, when on best shape I was managing 1:15-1:16... also HR by the roof, hitting 180+ in all intervals and 150 bpms in the 1' recoveries.

Over a week I've been eating very clean and I regained some of my avg weigh, now at 62.5.. but the morning HR still remains high in an avg of 50 although I may have seen a little improvement over this week.

The thing is that I'm very disappointed that one week of break can have such an impact on me. Until now I always have been training hard and motivated but I had faith in that over the time I will become more fit, but the more time I spend running the more I realize that the minimal break I do in my routine can set me very back on performance and also this year I'm only going backwards instead of forwards despite being following the cycles in a consistent manner as suggested here.

So all this makes me wonder what is the meaning of all my effort and that maybe I'm not cut for this and I must confess these lately days I even considered quitting running, at least as a "competitive" effort. Some would say "hey, don't think like that, take it easier and enjoy your running" but the fact is that running on an almost everyday basis over the same places during 3 years has become a little bit boring, I think I do it more because I set a goal some time ago that is important to me more than because I actually enjoy it, and while the key sessions where challenging once and had me motivated, this year's I can only run them a little bit slower every time, which means that I have to give everything on me on this sessions and that puts a lot of strain and I must confess that I'm starting even to "fear" this sessions more than enjoy them...

Sorry for lowering the karma of the forums so much with this, since this acts as my athletic log I wanted to persist my feelings here as they are important over the time to see where I was once and were I'm now. Maybe in the future I'll laugh at this. For the moment, I'll try to keep with the cycles without thinking too much and see if once I enter the regular races schedule this September I can catch up again with at least a decent shape.

[TheEd]

Hi Albert, what we must always remember is that we are only human and the idea behind the training and racing is to ultimately have fun

when one tries to test oneself when they know that everything is not right then we set ourselves up for failure

pressure becomes what you are expecting of yourself

first off .. you come across as a well-balanced person and runner and if you have had a week off and you currently feel jaded then do 1 to 2 weeks of the Build Up program

this will soon have you bouncing back towards feeling good

monitor your weight, look to have fun and take deep breaths on your run and when you exhale be thankful that you are able to exercise and feel vibrant

you have not lowered the 'karma' of the forums by one bit, you have only shown you are human

so take that breath and begin to find the enjoyment within

everything you feel and go through is added to the cycle of experience, which makes running a wonderous thing

above all enjoy .. the results will take care of themselves

always believe and you shall achieve

onwards and forwards

TheEd

[Albert83BCN]

That's a very thoughtful and wise piece of advice, thank you very much for sharing your experience with me and providing with good advise as always :notworthy:

Well, I'd rather prefer to stick for now with the cycles but just not putting much pressure in the key sessions, I think that may be it's the only thing I need for now because I can't say that I feel physically jaded, maybe not in best shape, but that's more on numbers than anything. Yesterday I did the 30' easy with 1' fast-slow on the mill and despite the HR was still a little bit higher than some weeks ago, I felt pretty well and ended the session with good feelings. Today morning HR went back for the 1st time in 10 days to under 50 with avg 46 min 43, pretty good, weight also settling into low 62, so I guess that things are starting to fall back in their place again.

Also, I'd like to recover some sessions I did some time ago like the billat 30"-30" and 1'-1' or just 30' on progression on the mill, which are dynamic and more enjoyable, starting long and slow runs for a build up right now I think that it would work even worse from a mentally point of view, moreover when this next weekend I'm starting to race, it would feel a little bit awkward.

Today I'm going to spend the weekend on the town where I used to spend summer holidays on my teenager days, I also started doing some of the first runs there. Tomorrow is for spending time with girlfriend and friends on the beach and the bar but for Sunday I plan to go early on the morning for a semi long run, I kind of feel like I want to do it, maybe just nostalgy, but I'm looking forward to it.

Next Sunday I have a 2100m flat race and then the next two weekends a very fast 10K each, so 3 weeks in a row racing.

If I were to choose, I think I would start this next week with the first week of the cycle so it fits pretty well for being rested enough for the 3rd one on the 16th September which I guess is the key one, although the one on the 9th September is also important, I got sub 37 there for the first time after lot of hard work and it's special and would like to run a decent race (although I promise not to be very hard on myself if it's not the case )

Also, this fall will be pretty intense with 10ks, so I was planning to stick with the cycles until, I guess, late November-early December when I think it will be a perfect time for a small off-period and/or build up because I will start to change goals and look to train for one pendant assignment: the sub 80' half-marathon on January-February.

What do you think?

Onwards and forwards

[IamWill]

Well, in absence of TheEd's answer, I think you'll totally going to ace that 80' half marathon in the winter. However packing the autumn with 10k races is going to wear you down and so choose wisely. Most people take around 6 days to recover from a 10k race, so that will mean that you won't be able to do your key training sessions as well as you could do them, so that's gonna hamper your progress. Unless you don't 'race' every race of course. Does that make sense?

[TheEd]

Hi Albert, being in Finland has led to a fair amount of pressure etc etc .. so apologies if I did not answer your post previously .. when you come off the Build Up program you will most definitely be in a different space and should find that you move to a new level quite rapidly after the 1st 10k cycle

running a half marathon is very much 'doable' on the 10k program and if you maintain a longer run over the 1st weekend of around 23 to 25km the half is normally a breeze

where are you now in your current training?

Cheers

TheEd

[Albert83BCN]

Good nite everybody!

Thanks IamWill, I've seen that you brought up a pretty decent 5x2000 session, I guess you should be racing anytime near? Best wishes for your race and really looking forward to see what are you up to :great:

Don't worry TheEd, I've already seen on facebook that you had limited internet access and I also can understand that with so many posts it must be easy to miss some of them every now and then hehe.

Well, I've been sticking with the training and also just ran 2 races and to tell the truth things are still going in a pretty bad direction

It has been some time since last report so lets quickly review at least the 3 last weeks:

Mon 20 Aug: 52' relaxed pace, 10.16 Km
Tue 21 Aug: warmup + 10x400 R60" between 1:17-1:20 pace per lap + cooldown. Total 10Km
Wed 22 Aug: 30' easy progressive on the mill from 5:23 pace to 4:25. Total 6.28 Km
Thu 23 Aug: 30' easy with 6x1' fast-slow then 1' 10K race pace. Total 10 Km in 45'
Fri 24 Aug: 8.5 Km on progression in the mill in 37'
Sat 25 Aug: Rest
Sun 26 Aug: Long run 22.8 Km in 1:40' (next Sunday would have a 2000m race so did the long run on the 3rd week instead of thr 1st from the next cycle)

Mon 27 Aug: 55' relaxed on the mill, 10.7 Km
Tue 28 Aug: 1h moderate to fast, 14.5 Km
Wed 29 Aug: 45' relaxed on the mill, 8.13 Km
Thu 30 Aug: Rest
Fri 31 Aug: 5x2000 R90", fastest at 3:45 pace and slowest at 3:52 (couldn't do it on Thrusday as planned so exchanged the session and rest days, ok I know it's not the best scenario to do the 2000m race in the next 48h..)
Sat 01 Sep: Rest
Sun 02 Sep: Warmup + 2000m race in 7:12. Pretty bad considering that the last edition I ran it in 6:40... 32s in a 2K race is a pretty heavy loss in performance (and yes, back then I also ran a pretty hard interval session few days ago so the scenario was pretty similar...)

Mon 03 Sep: 30' relaxed on the mill, 5.5 Km
Tue 04 Sep: Warmup + 5x1000 R60", fastest at 3:32 pace and slowest at 3:43 + cooldown. Total 14Km. A friend of mine joined me but he had a sudden bad feeling on one of the calves when we finished the 5th interval, he needed to stop and I was so torn out running a 1K interval at 3:42 that I decided to call it a day also, guessed that my race on Sunday will benefit also from holding it a little back...
Wed 05 Sep: 1h relaxed, 11.85 Km
Thu 06 Sep: Rest
Fri 07 Sep: 30' easy + 6x 1' fast-slow then 1' at 10K race pace. 10K in 45'
Sat 08 Sep: Rest

I'd like to post HR profiles but it would be crazy for so many sessions, but as a general rule of thumb, I can tell you that they have been sticking about 10 bpms higher in all sessions compared to May-June when things were apparently going in the right direction.

... and Sunday 09, that's today. I raced a flat 10K in 38:46, avg HR 178, max HR 183. Previous year I ran it in 36:41. Well, after the loss in the 2K race and with the recent feelings I kind of expected something like this, although I wanted to believe that I would at lest run in sub 37:30... :noway:

So this is where I am at this moment.

Next sunday I have another flat 10K. Last year I ran a merely 30 Kms on this comming week and did just a 8x400 R2' on Tuesday as a quality session, so I could recover well from the previous race, and it worked pretty well, I ran in 36:10 or so, I think, even when went all-in the previous week. So I was planning on doing something like this, this time will be to try to bring a sub 38' unfortunately.

Any advice?

[TheEd]

Albert .. look to get on the Build Up program immediately

you can still run the 10k race however a few weeks on the build up program will benefit you more

no timed sessions and fartlek instead of intervals

this will take you out of this current 'rut'

please do consider doing so

TheEd
ps.. we must have planned down periods so we can step-up the training on returning, you cannot train your way out of a slumber but instead need to do something different

[Albert83BCN]

Understood, so today starting with day 1 of the build up program, 1h totally relaxed, to achieve near 140 bpms I think this will be about 5:20 pace or so on my current state.

According to the build up, on Saturday I'd have a 75' session, I don't think that it would be a good idea the day before a key race. Please I'd need advice about to have proper rest for the race day, I guess I'd just follow the build up but just skip Saturaday, is this right?

Edited: And as for friday, I see there is running hills planned, I think this would be hard on the quads, shouldn't I just stick this day with the 30' easy with 6x 1' fast-slow pre-race sharpening session?

[Albert83BCN]

By the way, today's session completed.

1h totally relaxed - 11.63 Km at 5:09 avg pace, avg HR 147. Sorry I tried to get near the low 140 bpms but can't manage to run slower. At least I can tell I felt relaxed during the whole session, specially at the end when I got the lowest bpms, maybe because also the temperature was going down.

Ran from 5:30 to 6:30 PM, temperature 26.5 to 25 ºC, humidity 70%, cloudy and no apreciable wind.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/221197056