Tuesday, April 10, 2007

4/08/2007 Short Recovery Run + 2 VAPs

I'm playing some catch up here with the last week's worth of entries. I'll probably keep them short and to the point. On the other hand I do have the advantage of hindsight to work with here. Coming off the heels of a very successful half marathon today I can see the advantage of doing this workout where I could not before.

I have consistently run my races in a haphazzard manor up until this point. I would come out fast and hard pushing it the entire way. In the end I would struggle to finish strong. Even if I had a good time it would frequently leave me feeling defeated or frustrated. Today I had my eureka moment. Today I turned it around finally. I forced myself to come out slow and throughout the race I would surge forward a bit for 400 meters or so testing how my legs felt and then back off. Those short surges left me with lots of gas at the end of the race to put in the best kick I've had ever. I'll talk more about that later, but the point is I think part of this turn around was due to this type of workout.

It was a typical short recovery run of 3.3 miles on Filager and Meghan's Run. The difference is that it included two 4 minute, 1/2 mile vap's. From easy pace I would pick it up to a pace that was just above my comfort zone for the 4 minutes and then back it down. Excellent workout.

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