Notes
So...... the workout was supposed to be 6 x Progressive 90s: 30 seconds at GRP, 30 seconds at 10k pace, and 30 seconds at 5k pace.
I think I've only said once in the past year that a workout was not my favorite. I'll be a little less subtle here .. I really do not like this workout at all. It's not hard physically (in fact, it didnt feel very challenging at all physically), but it's nearly impossible to track and run accurate paces and it just mentally drives me nuts.
Last time I did it, I set my Garmin for 90 second intervals. The problem there is that because I can only see the average pace for the entire 90 seconds, I really dont have a way of gauging my pace for the 2nd and 3rd 30 second sections. I basically just started kinda slow and tried to speed it up a bit every 30 seconds. I could change my watch to "actual current pace", but I've always felt that's a really bad setting... you can literally take 2 fast steps and your entire pace changes dramatically on that setting.
So this time, I tried setting my watch for 3 x 30 second intervals for each set. This was even worse! It takes Garmin about 15-18 seconds to "catch" your pace -- so by the time the I could see my pace, there was not enough time to adjust to get the 30 seconds to be at the right pace (ie if I was too fast, I'd try to slow way down for the last 10 seconds, but it wasnt enough time for my overall pace to change for the section). It was also just plain annoying -- I felt like I was running staring at my watch most of the time versus thinking about running.
I understand why this workout is physically good for me, given my hammy -- but it just drove my analytical mind bonkers. I never really knew what my pace truly was and therefore the challenge was gone. I think perhaps just keeping to shorter intervals (ie 1-3 mins) versus longer faster speed segments (ie doing full miles at fast paces) is probably a better tactic for me at this point? I dont know -- i just know this drove me crazy.
RA is showing my pace for almost all of these at 8:20 --- this isnt true. I put in what Garmin had me in there, but you'll see these paces are pretty lame/off anyways. I just could not seem to get any of them right (due to the reasons listed above).