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December's Races
As mentioned by Bierzo Baggie, a few weeks ago I was running with two ex world champion marathon runners, an ex European Championship runner 1500m and (depending on the outcome of Floyd Landis drug test) the winner of this years Tour de France. Running with them may be a little strong, they were in the same race as me, the Volta al Ria de Ferrol half marathon, but I was running behind them. Martin Fiz, world champion in Gothenburg 1995 and editor of runners world finished in 1h08. Mario Silva, 3rd in the 1990 European Championships 1500m was close by and Abel Anton, world marathon champ in both Athens 97 and Seville 99 , finished in 1h18 or there abouts (he won the London Marathon in the year between his two Worlds aswell). Oscar Pereiro the soon to be crowned winner of this years tour finished in 1h20 (well, they say he would have done if he had been in training he actually accepted a car ride between kms 10 and 18 bloody cheat). Riazor Blue trailed behind in 1h33, two minutes slower than two years ago, and they say that it was a short course this year.
It was an awful day with strong winds and heavy rain for the last half hour of the race. I had a cold the week beforehand and had only trained eight times in the previous month so i wasnt expecting too much. As it turned out I was expecting to run around 1h35 but it seems that the excitement of running with champions made everyone start off faster than usual, or perhaps it was the assistance of the wind at our backs. Whichever, I started off too fast, given the hills that we had to climb in the first two or three kilometers. When I looked at my HRM it read 185bpm, a figure which would normally indicate somewhere around my 5 mile pace. Common sense would have told me to slow down to somewhere around 178bpm but any slower and I would have been going backwards so like a fool I carried on. I knew that itd be hard to maintain that kind of pace and I was going to fade badly near the end but I decided to see how far I could go before crashing and burning. Not a very sensible thing to do given the cold the week before.
I crashed at around the 17 kilometer mark, which wasnt bad really. It coincided with torrential rain and a viscious headwind . There were many parts of the course where our feet were under water as we spashed those last kilometers, the rain had turned my Saucony Azuras into two planks of wood and one by one I was being passed by those chaps I had left for dust only ten kilometers before. Actually, I didnt slow too much in those last few kilometers but they hurt like hell.What was really surprising was that my average heart rate for the whole race was 185bpm or around 94% max. I would normally expect to be between 173 and 179 for a half marathon.
Anyway, the upshot of my experience in Ferrol was that I decided that I should put in a bit of training before the Lugo monumental 10km two weeks later. Two weeks are not a lot of time to try and recover 15 months worth of training so I reasoned that a quick fix was the only option. I would have trained hard every day, but advancing age doesnt allow for that kind of nonsense these days. In the end, the two weeks looked like this:
Wendesday 2km warm up 8 x 1000m with 400m recoveries, 2km cool down.
Thursday 8.4km at a gentle pace.
Friday 2km warm up, 2 x 10 x 400m, recovery to 125 bpm 2km cool down.
Saturday Rest.
Sunday 2km warm up, 6 x 1600m with 400m recoveries, 2km cool down.
Monday 6 km very easy.
Tuesday 2km warm up, 20 x 200m with 200m recovery, 2km cool down.
Wednesday 12km at 150bpm.
Thursday Rest.
Friday 2km warm up, 8 x 1000m with 200m recovery, 2km cool down.
Saturday 6km very easy.
With this surge in training I managed to knock a whole second off last years result, finishing in 4142 which is two minutes outside what I was running 18 months ago but gives me hope for Viana do Castelo on 28th January. Lets see if I can find the time to continue this rythym, and not eat like a pig over Christmas and the New Year. If not, Ill have the car waiting for me at the 10km mark in Viana.
Felices fiestas a tod@s.
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