Notes
After 12 years of training myself, I finally bought a book about how to coach yourself: "Run Faster" by Brad Hudson (and Matt Fitzgerald). Hudson is most noted for coaching Dathan Ritzenhein after college and putting him in marathons early and generally unsuccessfully except for 9th place finish at the 2008 Olympics (also where Samuel Wanjiru changed what was thought possible in championship races). Maybe most famously, just a couple months after Ritz left Hudson for Salazar, he broke the 5k American Record. Perhaps proving Hudson was good at getting his runners fit, but Salazar was the undisputed king of getting the most out of his runners. But, seeing as Salazar hasn't published his own training manual (and disregarding all his other accusations), I've been excited about this book. So far I've read the intro chapters and skipped around to get a workout for today. I generally like all his training methods other than how difficult some of the workouts seem to be. But he also stresses adaptation and progression so if you do the work beforehand, I suppose the workouts should be manageable.
Today is 3 x 10 min moving from half-marathon pace to 10k pace, or generally doing 10 mile pace. 2.5 mile warmup felt fine.
1) 5:47 pace. Exactly the same pace as my half-marathon this spring. Granted, this rep was the uphill one. It felt like I was pushing hard but also not getting tired.
2) 5:27 pace. A bit surprised with a first mile of 5:25, even with it being more downhill. With that I relaxed some and slowed slightly on the flats.
3) 5:18 pace. Maybe not in 10k pace anymore but it still felt right, even if the effort and heart rate were certainly higher than the previous 2 reps. Like last week, I got a nice boost on the 1 short downhill in the first mile and then I was quite happy with how I felt strong enough to maintain and even increase my pace for the 2nd (near) mile.
Great workout, feeling good. Hopefully I can at least hold this fitness for a few weeks or dare I wish to increase it?