Intervals faster than PR?!? (Read 755 times)

I had a bunch of questions - starting with "are you sure you logged your recovery laps? - and then I peeked at your workout. Now I'll skip the questions and just make a comment: you need to go run a 5k. Assuming that 9/2006 19:00ish run is the 5k PR you're talking about, that's 7-8 months ago. Looks like you've gotten significantly faster since then. Go run a race, then see if your intervals are really faster than your PR. Looks to me like you'll be sub-19 easily. I'm guessing the sprint/jog technique wouldn't work so well. Then again, you maintain a pretty fast pace on your recovery laps (too fast maybe? You might want to ask somebody smarter than me that one ...). After you set your next PR, maybe you could seriously try a sort of interval/fartlek race technique at the next one and see what happens.

Did you stop and rest before you ran your recovery lap? If not I think you should attempt to run a sub-18 minute 5K. But first I would reccomend running a 5K tempo run at about a 6 minute mile pace.

The results from this morning aren't in line with what I typically run during intervals - my recovery laps are usually much slower. I think this is most likely to be a memory error (I don't have a watch that keeps track of it for me), especially since nobody else seems to have had that kind of experience. I know that the speed intervals are correct, but I'm going to bet that I remembered the recovery times wrong. I've only been using RA for a month, and my old spreadsheet didn't care what my recovery times were. It seems a little more difficult to remember both numbers. Ah well, it would have been pretty sweet if they were correct. I guess if it happens again next week, I'll believe it, otherwise I'm just going to assume that I messed it up somehow - I really don't feel like I'm in condition for a sub-18:00 5k.

Did I miss something? I'm not sure I understand. You ran 800 meters as part of a threshold run and are suprised that you ran at a faster pace than a 5000 meter run? Do I have this right? I am not surprised. This is how it is supposed to be. Even JK knows that. A threshold run is supposed to be at about your 3k pace. The longer your race, the slower your pace (in general). So if you can run a 5k at a 6:00 pace, and then go out and run a half marathon at a 6:00 pace, your 5k is not reflective of your abilities. At the end of a race of any distance you should feel like you gave it exactly your all. So when you run a 3k, you should feel as if you could not run 3001 meters. Which is a roundabout way of saying, of course your 800 meter threshold run was at a pace faster than your 5000 meter race pace. That is how you are supposed to run them. McMillan agrees. According to McMillan, your 800 meter intervals should be run in 2:46.9 to 2:54.5 for an 19:00 5k and 2:38.1 to 2:45.3 for an 18:00 5k. The pace for those intervals are faster than the corrolary 5k paces.

Trent has some minor reading comprehension issues. We just call him "special." Try grunting. He speaks monkey fluently.

It looks like the recoveries were not real recoveries;

Recoveries between "Repeatitions" is when you go slow, or walk, to fully recover. Recoveries between "Intervals" are meant to be short ( 1/2 the distance or time) so during the next interval your Heart is quickly back up to the effort for which intervals are meant to accomplish.

Intervals are tough as hell when done correctly. You DO NOT get a full RECOVERY! Nor should you seek one, if so you are, you're just doing "Repeats". Stand! Sheesh!