Friday 17 April 2009

Tempo run vomination

Really wasn't feeling up to doing a tempo run this evening. Hadn't eaten enough for breakfast or lunch and had endured a growling stomach for two hours before I clocked off work and headed over to the gym. Surprisingly I felt a fair bit better after the 3k warmup (progression from 6:00/k to 4:00/k to get the legs moving), but that feeling didn't last long. The goal was 30:00 for 8k and as soon as the treadmill got up to speed (3:45/k), it immediately felt too fast. I felt like I was going to slip off the back and had to really concentrate on keeping the cadence up. After a few minutes I was sweating like a dog (one genetically modified to have sweat glands), knowing it was unsustainable and expecting to start bonking any moment.

Happily that never happened, though I was never comfortable and had to pull out all my mind games (long multiplication problems, counting cadence, watching the big guys lift small weights) to get me through it. After 5k (18:45), I decided to crank up the speed a bit just so it would be over more quickly. Ended up finishing in 29:40, feeling pretty spent. I weighed myself afterwards and I'd lost two kg of water weight. Drank heftily from my drink bottle to compensate, which was apparently not very much appreciated by my stomach, because I progressively vomited it all out onto the side of the bike path as I rode home.

Understandably felt very weak by the end of the ride:P

Quite happy with the workout even though it was damn tough. The legs feel good and recovered from the ride to Colac over the weekend (halfway through writing a report for that) and I've dropped a bit of weight (scale's read 68.4kg the last few times, down from 70kg a week ago). Long run on Sunday (19k) will be a bit fearsome, but I'll get through it. Then I'm planning on doing a Half Marathon Sunday week completely untapered. Realistically, I probably won't do much better than 90 minutes, but am kind of hoping to get a PB. The week after that will involve a taper for Puffing Billy.

Looking forward to it all, but am feeling a bit cluttered at the moment with essays to write, mid semester exams to study for etc.

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