Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Lactating the Threshold

What a great workout!!!

Hard. But awesome.

Today was an 8 mile run with 4 of the miles at the lactate threshold pace. This pace as described in Advanced Marathoning as :

"Lactate threshold training should be run at close to the pace that you could currently race for 1 hour"

For us this is about our 15K pace (for faster runners this is more like their 1/2 marathon pace....because they can cover more ground in an hour). In other words :

"..this should be the intensity at which lactate is just starting to accumulate in your muscles and blood."

So it's about the intensity you run.

So ok, our plan was to run for 2 miles as a warm up. Then the four LT miles, then 2 miles for a cool down. I had read a tip about these runs to just think about the mile you are on and making it a quality mile and don't worry about the rest of the miles...yet. Ok so here are the splits

Mile 0-2 (Warm Up): 8:43
Mile 3 (LT-1) : 7:38
Mile 4 (LT-2) : 7:39
Mile 5 (LT-3) : 7:44
Mile 6 (LT-4) : 7:25
Mile 7-8 (Cool Down) : 9:54

Average = 8:28 min/mile

So as you can see by our LT paces we did extremly well. The last mile we were smokin'! I was a little worried at the third LT mile because we had dropped 5 seconds, but we overly made up for it in the last mile. PLUS we were alrady 15-20 seconds faster than we thought we could do. Now, you might notice those last two miles are a little slower..but whatever. We walked for a little and jogged over to a water fountain. But after that...let me tell you it felt awesome! A nice easy pace and it felt SO easy after those speedy miles.

So a great workout and I look forward to trying these again.

For those of you who have these workouts coming up, really think only about the mile you are on. It made it so much easier. Tomorrow is a 4 mile recovery.

14 comments:

Triseverance said...

Impressive running you two, I am glad it went well and it has me breathing a bit easier about running that sucker in two weeks.

Really really great job. I think those and some of the VO2 max runs are the toughest on the plan.

Haight said...

::::mental note:::: meet Leah & Jason for beers and never for running

Kick ass!!

Iron Jayhawk said...

i'm with haight...

you go, you speed demons, you!! nicely done, kids. :)

Anonymous said...

Very nice workout Jason and Leah. I think the training is already starting to show you how much faster you can get. Keep up the great work...

SRR said...

Nice average pace!

Anonymous said...

That's good information about the lactic acid threshold. Thanks! I did a Tempo run yesterday and I wasn't sure how fast I should have been going.

Scott said...

If Rick ever sees you posting all that data with no uncertainties you can kiss your PhD goodbye! Seriously, if your are concerned about 5 seconds, are you really just rattling around inside of the uncertainty of the gps?
DAd

LeahC said...

no i don't think it's GPS accuracy. But 5 seconds is 5 seconds.

I think i can kiss my phd goodbye for even having time for writing on this site :-)

KIDDING!!! (i hope)

Full Metal Lunchbox said...

Awesome splits!

You two are going to *smoke* in the marathon this year!

LeahC said...

thanks everyone for the speedy compliments!!! it's a great feeling to get out there and get speedy for some miles

Joe said...

Wow! Those middle four miles were FAST! Did you feel much discomfort during those miles?

Bridgette said...

You guys are awesome!

LeahC said...

joe-

not really. Just felt strong and smooth. My legs got heavy towards the end but other than that I was just trying to concentrate on each mile and not think ahead. That kept my concentration on my form, pace and breathing.

I was upset though because half way through the third mile my iPod lost battery. But it was nice to see that it didn't slow me down.

Bridgette-thanks :-)

Anonymous said...

You two rock! You are really like professional runners.