Notes
-- Garmin Connect Import --
I'm sort of perplexed by this workout.
Right away it felt off- like whatever "it" is, I didn't have it today. And maybe that's true. My breathing felt labored even in my warm-up, and my legs felt flat, like I didn't have any pop. Additionally, for what its worth, I also have my period. And while my philosophy about periods is that I don't write off training or days in general each month simply because of that- its also a thing that is real. And for about 12 years now, when I have it, hard efforts just don't go as well. Call it getting psyched out or mailing the workout in as a failure before it even starts (But I don't think that's it? because I really try not to let it dictate my life and training?) call it biology, who knows.
So maybe it was any number of factors, and maybe I was just fatigued or under-recovered, or maybe I was dehydrated, or maybe I was calorie deficient, or maybe it was just a Thursday and I wore my black jeans instead of my blue jeans. I'll probably never know. But I just didn't seem to have it. I've had some pretty stellar workouts lately, so it was probably time.
But the perplexing part is that while I was doing it, it felt really hard, and it felt like my paces were all over the place. And while it wasn't a flashy or impressive threshold workout, when I look back, the paces were actually just sorta fine? Maybe not what I was hoping for but also maybe not as bad or as slow as it felt? So maybe the workout was actually quite accurate, it just felt harder than I wanted it to?
As I reflect more, I think I was perplexed because I was expecting faster paces when really I don't know why I would expect that. I wonder if my perception was skewed because my Sunday workout went really well. Maybe I thought of course it would be well within my abilities to run significantly faster paces than I did on Sunday because that workout was 3 mile intervals and today was 1 mile intervals, and maybe that false idea skewed how hard it felt to run paces that were essentially the same, ish as the paces I ran over the weekend. I think having those two workouts sandwiched together in relatively close proximity, combined with the fact that I felt really good for one workout and not very good for the other, did some weird things to my psyche.
Here are he facts: The workout happened, and I did it. It felt hard. It felt like my legs had no pop. The threshold pace felt harder than I thought it should given the paces I was running. It felt hard from the beginning and because of that I did a very poor job of not looking at my watch and just running on effort- I've been really good about that lately, and today I didn't trust myself to not just slip into laziness because it was hard. My legs were absolutely trashed afterwards. On the last couple reps I was getting the "end of a race, can't continue at that effort, hamstring cramping and failing" kind of fatigue- so probably that means that the effort was greater than threshold on the last couple. But the day was strange, so who knows.
Even in my cooldown during which I shuffled along at about 8:45 pace, I couldn't get my heart rate below about 170, so something was just sort of off. And if that's the most profound insight I have after significant relflection, well that's probably okay.
splits: 6:26, 6:20, 6:21, 6:31, 6:26, 6:37 (2 good uphills), 6:23