Quick update due to limited time.
As I mentioned in a previous post, Saturday was set up nicely for a half marathon pace test run. My half marathon PR is 1:40:26 set last November. Prior to that, my half marathons (Lowell Sun in October '08 and '10, Worcester half in June '11) all clocked in around 1:53. So going down to 1:40, taking 13 minutes (a full minute/mile) was pretty significant. Since November, I haven't done much for speed work - just a couple threshold runs towards the end of the 2011 year, but nothing since then.
While this test run wasn't a full 13.1 miles, it still gave me a pretty good idea of what kind of performance I could expect next week. With an avg HR of 164, a pace of 7:15 min/miles, it certainly blows the doors off the 169 avg HR from November, where I did 7:39 min/miles. However, that course was relatively hilly - so I'm sure a large portion of the increased HR and apparent speed increases since then is difference in terrain.
The most notable thing I took away from this run was how I felt after about eight miles. I felt like I was starting to bonk a bit - the legs felt sluggish and the HR started to creep up. So like the other week's 20 miler where I sped up rather than slowed down - I did the same thing this time. Throughout the remaining three miles, I started to notice a trend - when I'd take a swig of gatorade, some of that sluggish feeling in my legs would go away. The remarkable thing was how quickly it happened. It wasn't instantaneous - but I feel like there were 2-3 times where I'd down a gulp, and certainly within 30 seconds I'd feel more energized again. That feeling would last for a few minutes, then I'd feel sluggish again. Whether it was actually that quickly that the sugars from the gatorade took effect, or whether it was just my mind playing tricks on me, I don't know. It is something I want to look into in the future and experiment around with a bit.
So then, the following day (Sunday), I did the trainerroad Baxter workout. This was the last repeat workout ever since switching over to basing workouts on power. The main idea with this workout is to find a single gear ratio, and stick with it throughout the whole workout. I'm not sure whether it was designed to be this way, but in order to have a decent cadence on the lower power portions, I was at a lower gear than I'd have expected. As a result, the HR was relatively low. On the other hand, the cadence did get up to my max comfort cadence of just a bit higher than 110. So while this was not necessarily a taxing aerobic workout, I looked at it as a way to get comfortable with different cadence rates, and trying to figure out how to relax and minimize any bouncing at the higher cadences.
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