Double session today!
I did another lunch-break run today - same loop as last time. Once again, it was at an easy pace - at this point I'm more interested in seeing what kind of mileage volume I can accumulate and build up. Also, I knew I'd be hitting the trainer this evening (and likely doing another lunch run tomorrow), so I definitely wanted to take todays run pretty easy and keep it low stress.
I ran this run in my new NB Minimus road shoes. It was my second run in them, but the jury is still out. I may have mentioned this before in another post, but they seem to have a bump of extra material on the outside of the foot, about mid-foot. I'm not positive, but I think it may be something to encourage forefoot striking. While it's easy enough to forefoot strike, my concern is that at LSD paces, I tend to naturally fall into more of a mid-foot strike, where I can feel that bump. I'm hoping that it won't cause any issues; I can tell you one thing for certain - the second I start feeling something a little odd that persists through multiple runs in those shoes, they are getting tossed. So I'm not totally convinced they will work for me - but I do like that they invoke more calf muscle, and due to the 4 mm heel to toe drop (vs the 7 mm for my Nike Free Runs), they are the next step in the direction of barefoot/minimalist running (although they are anything but minimalist shoes - the drop is only 4 mm, but there is definitely a sole to them).
For my cycling workout, I wanted to do something relatively easy, so I ended up just doing a non-structured 90 minute workout. The goal was to keep a HR of around 145 - so it was a simple and straight forward 10-15 minute progressive warmup, and then settling into a speed of about 17-17.5 mph, resulting in a power of about 200W for 90 minutes right around the target HR. What amazed me about this workout was how it felt. I wasn't necessarily faster than a previous 90 minute spin, and my HR wasn't lower (in fact, my HR was a tad higher - but then again it was a double session today) - but my legs really felt different on the pedals. Previously, I would say that I was 75% using an up/down motion on the pedals - especially if I wasn't thinking about it. If I thought about it, I could get the muscles to apply pressure on the pedals throughout the cycle, but I could also tell that more leg muscles were firing than was necessary. End result was that there was a lot of fighting amongst the muscles. However, just a couple sessions of easy one leg drills seems to have really done a lot to teach the muscles how to fire, and when to fire so that they could apply pressure when necessary, and relax when necessary. So instead of 75% up/down, it seems almost flipped around - 75% circular with just some residual up/down that needs to be tweaked. I actually found myself with my mind drifting a bit (I was watching episodes of 24, afterall), but when I'd return my attention, I was still actually more 'cycling', instead of 'pistoning'.
So while my speed and HR may not reflect it, I think thats a very positive step - so it may be that the primary benefit of this workout isn't the aerobic benefits, but one more of cycling efficiency, which will pay dividends down the road.
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