Mar 13, 2007

Good Start?

Today was the unofficial start to my Frank Horwill workouts. Unofficial because I won't continue with the other workouts he outlines this week but I did want to try this one just to see how it would feel. I ended up with 12 x 200 in 37 seconds. I'm not really sure how to judge this workout. Horwill doesn't give a specific number, only saying to do them to exhaustion, ie unable to complete 200 meters in 37 seconds. The recovery period starts at 90 seconds and declines by 15 seconds every repetition and then starts over again at 90. My last 200 was within 37 seconds but after only a 15 second rest I really felt I couldn't do another 200. However if I had muscled through that one it is likely that a 90 second recovery would have enabled me to continue on with a few more repetitions. Anyway I think this gives me a good baseline to start with.

I think it's time I give a shout out to my running club, Namban Rengo. We usually meet for speedwork at Oda Field on Wednesday nights, long runs in Yoyogi park on Sunday mornings and various races and ekidens (relay races) throughout the year. I highly recommend a running club to anybody out there. Having a team to run with is very motivational and pushes you to push yourself much more than you would do on your own. This is especially true with speedwork. Also a club provides a great reservoir of knowledge for all of runnings little questions.

5 comments:

Bill G said...

I'm still hesitating to join the Tuesday night track workouts - my excuse this week was being sick. But your logic is sound - I'm sure it would be enjoyable once I did it. Duoh.

Ingo said...

Alright track champion! I'll follow your approach very closely and steal ideas where ever I can. So you are kicking off with basically an anaerobic workout. The interesting thing with your plan is that you cover a wide range of intensities in a week, whereas Lydiard is more cyclical (like 10 weeks Marathon conditioning, 6 weeks hills, 10 weeks Track Schedule etc.).

The take-home message from this post is that once your anaerobic conditioning has reached maximum (in 4-8 weeks), you cannot do much more than that to improve this part of the running equation.

In other words, you cannot do much harm with 'too much' aerobic running, but you can do so with anaerobic training.

AZ said...

Ingo,
Interesting information about anaerobic training. I'll have to consider that during my speed work. I usually follow the rule of thumb that says leave the track with one more repetition in your legs so it doesn't totally tear you down. At least now I have a new subject for scouring the internet.

Bill, you'll be happy once you get started with the speed work.

Bill G said...

AZ, I just realized that the title of this blog post is the punchline to the joke "what do you call 100 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?"

AZ said...

Ha, ha. That's a funny one. Maybe I'll try to title all my posts with punchlines. I fear that would require me to be much more creative than I am.