The general pattern of our club sessions lately is that while the others are running the usual diet of short sharp intervals, I am doing my rather steadier long aerobic intervals. I do intervals of at least a mile, sometimes 2 miles, working to a heart rate limit, which last night was 147bpm or 84% of maxHR - nicely aerobic.
Last night, the session for the others was fartlek: 200m of fast running followed by 200m of jog recovery, and repeat ad infinitum, or when the coach says stop, whichever comes sooner. For me it was 1 mile repetitions with a 90 sec jog recovery.
We set off together, and naturally the fast guys disappeared off into the distance. I carried on at my steady but, increasingly so, brisk pace behind them. As they slowed to a jog recovery, I would catch them up. This continued for a few repetitions, until after about 1200m they had only just overtaken me on their fast bit, when it came to their recovery jog once more. With them only a few paces in front of me, they slowed suddenly and I was left to unceremoniously barge my way between them.
I wonder if they were shocked that one of the club's slow lady runners had kept pace with them? For me, it illustrated how much I've been improving: my pace for that first repetition was 7:30/mile - a pace I've never before run at - and at a limited HR too. I'll admit it was a little too quick, as I failed to maintain that pace for the remaining 4 repetitions, but I'm still thrilled to be running that sort of pace comfortably.
I love these regular indicators of improvement, no matter what form they take. Base training rocks!
For the record here are the stats:
| Lap | Pace/mile | Ave HR |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 7:29 | 137 |
| 2 | 7:39 | 142 |
| 3 | 7:42 | 142 |
| 4 | 7:50 | 142 |
| 5 | 7:53 | 142 |
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