Post
by rlk » May 23rd, 2011, 7:54 pm
I've been pulling some nice PR's lately.
I've been doing intervals (1:00/2:00) once a week. Normally my first one is the slow one (around 312m, typically), then I do 8 solid ones in the 315-320 range, and give it everything I have for the last one. Today I did 341 for that final one, with my HR at 180 (not bad for 47 years old). The first 9, I was mostly in the 160's recovering into the 130's or low 140's at maybe a 2:30 pace. On very hard workouts, I've been getting my HR into the 170's, but it falls into the 120's within a few minutes. I was pulling 1:26's for the first 30 seconds or so (that's my personal low pull), but I couldn't hold on. I'm not all that strong per the weights, but I have good CV.
A couple of weeks ago, we did a 1500m at the gym (I wanted to get a rankable time, but they wouldn't do 2K -- afraid that some people might go overboard). I pulled 5:12 for the qualifier (I could have qualified with well over 6:00, but that would have felt really foolish), but I wanted to break 5:00 for the final. My strategy was to pull 1:41, 1:40, and as fast as I could. My splits were 1:40.7, 1:40.7, 1:36.9, for a total of 4:57.5 (the person at the gym kept yelling at me to crank it up during the first 1K, but that wasn't my plan!). Second place was 5:18 and third place was 6:22, so I wasn't really in a lot of danger. I don't normally do short ones like that, so I was pleased, but given that my HR was only 176 and I recovered quickly, I figure I could have squeezed a few more seconds out of it. I have to go back and try 2K.
My real strength is at 30 minutes. A week before that race, I pulled 8427 (1:46.8 pace). I was on top of the board for a couple of days (the advantage of doing that in early May) and I'm still #2 for my bracket for the year. Maybe I can get to 8500 this year, but it's going to be tough, looking at my splits. My 5 minutes splits (last 5 minutes) are still usually not better than 1422 or so (on good days, I could do that even when I only occasionally broke 8200), and on off days I might do an 8300 without even a 1400 split. But I'm starting faster and holding on in the high 1:40's. I've been improving about 100m/year for the past few years, and the folks at the gym gave me a good training plan (with the intervals) that's boosted my distance a lot.
I also have to do an hour and a 1/2M. My 1 hour is only 16236, but I should be able to break 16400 and maybe 16500 without much difficulty. My 1/2M is only 1:21:18, but I wasn't going for speed -- I had planned a fairly light workout, 1 hour at maybe 1:57, but at the end I decided to keep going. My butt was really sore, and in the last 5 minutes or so I cranked it up to 1:48 just to get off the fool thing a bit sooner.
M, 50, 194 cm, 94 kg, | Low pull: 1:26 | 1m: 341 | 500: 1:32.1 | 1000: 3:11.3 | 1500: 4:52.7 | 2K: 6:30.7 | 10m: 2935 | 3K: 10:15.2 | 5K: 17:05.2 | 6K: 20:45.3 | 20m: 5782 | 30m: 8568 | 10K: 35:18.8 | 40m: 11192 | 1h: 16635 | HM: 77:19.7