Day Three: 21km Fartlek training

I had to do a 21 kilometre Fartlek run today, consisting of a warm-up, 3x fast 2km with jogging in between, and a 4 km cooldown. All odds were against me though: I got up at 5:30am so I didn't get to catch much sleep, had an extremely busy day at work and came home exhausted. It was raining pretty hard, very windy and cold, so I really had to drag myself into my running shorts and go outside knowing that I would spend the next 2 hours in the rain and cold. Mind over matter.

Let me break my run down for you:

4 km warm-up: I ran this at an average pace of 5:35min per kilometre, and had to really force myself to take it easy.

2 km sprint: I ran 2 kilometres at an average pace of 3:30 min/km. I'm not sure whether that qualifies as a 'sprint' but it's the fastest pace I could maintain for 2000 metres. It was kinda hard for my body to give everything I had when my mind knew I'd have to run 14 more kilometres after this.

10 min jogging: this was supposed to be the 'rest' in between sprints so I tried to jog real slow, but still ended up running at an average pace of 5:25 min/km and did 3 kilometres. Still, I was really surprised at how fast my body (breathing and heartbeat) recovered from the sprint, even while it was still making an effort.

2 km sprint: this time it was harder for me to find a pace that I could keep up with, but I finished these 2000 metres at approx 3:46 min/km.

10 min jogging: I let my body rest while jogging for 2 kilometres at 5:35 min/km. It's kinda weird to look back on this, because at the time it felt like I was the slowest runner on earth. I actually remember thinking "the people that cross me now, must think I'm such a loser".

2 km sprint: By now I had already ran 13 kilometres and apparantly it didn't show as much as I thought it did: I 'sprinted' these last 2000 metres at an average pace of 3:35 min/km.

10 min jogging: I jogged another 2 kilometres sticking around 5:35 min/km

4 km cooldown: the last 4 kilometres were supposed to be ran at an easy pace, but it felt like I still had something left in me, so I rounded up my half marathon at 4:45 min/km.

All things considered I think I ran a pretty decent half-marathon, I wasn't that far off from personal best on a 21km run, even including the jogging I did.

After the last half-marathon I did a couple weeks ago, I was plagued by dehydration, so I bought a belt thats holds four 160ml bottles. This was my first time actually using it, and it sucked! It kept shaking up and down, and kept me off-rhythm. I drank an entire bottle every time I was "resting" (jogging) and finished the last one during the cooldown. I may have to go get me a tighter belt though.

After spending these last two hours in the pouring rain, I took a well-deserved hot shower. I normally always shower as cold as possible, so I had forgotten what a hot shower feels like: heaven. I had a protein/oatmeal shake to restore my protein and carb levels, drank a liter of water, and laid on the coach reading for about an hour.

When I got up to get ready for the gym my stomach felt pretty upset and I felt kinda dizzy. I still went to the gym but it wasn't much of a workout: benchpressed for a while, did some . My stomach kept feeling upset for the rest of the night: I'll have to find out if this was because of the many calories I had burnt running (1672) or still the dehydration taking its toll.

On an unrelated note, I told you The Verve was played yesterday in the gym, well today they played the new radio-single of a friend of ours so that was pretty cool! She went to shoot the music video in California and wore a Deathwish bandana for the entire clip, which is awesome.

Distance: 21.06 kilometres.

Duration: 1 hour 43 minutes and 1 seconds.

Pace: 4:53 per kilometre.

Date: Thursday 14/07/11 at 03:27pm