Saturday 27 August 2011

Tempo fail






Of late the temperatures and humidity had declined a little and I was looking forward to knocking out a nice tempo session at close to true tempo pace. Tempo sessions are always really tough and I am always a little apprehensive about them, especially so for this session as I considered it a good fitness barometer
I set off and the first two miles were the warm up. I entered the first tempo mile of five tempo miles not feeling the best. In short, this session was a fail. The respective splits were 06:58, 06:59, 07:16, 06:54 and 07:38. I bailed about two thirds through the last mile. I felt pretty bad throughout. There was no life in the legs and my heart rate rarely exceeded 164, which I consider marathon effort, never mind tempo. However, the splits were twenty to forty seconds slower than marathon pace.
Very ticked off. What I concluded from this debacle is that trying to reach tempo pace at even the comparatively lower temperatures of 70F/21 is a no go. Furthermore, I am now almost certain I have what Jeff Galloway describes as sustained heat fatigue, the consequence of going too fast in high heat and humidity. I had been taking forty-five to sixty seconds off my mile split times but will now increase this to ninety to 120 seconds. Hopefully this will have me feeling better in a week or so, and who knows, maybe I'll be able to train in reasonable temperatures and without the need for gills!

3 comments:

Brian said...

It was super humid on Saturday. (I'm about 1.5hrs north of Baltimore.) One of the least enjoyable runs I've ever had.

Hopefully we've only got a couple more weeks of this! (And at least temps are down this week so far.)

Westley said...

I hope so! The lesson learned is that next summer I will attempt to buy teporary gym membership so that I can do at least three runs a week indoors.

Samurai Running said...

I know what you're talking about Westley. Humidity is a different animal indeed!

Ran at 6am around the streets of Taipei the other week and almost died, really. Well felt like I would!