Sprintervals in the sun

A week of running and walking
A week of running and walking
Coffee & Cake
Coffee & Cake – pre-race nutrition test

It’s been a mixed week this week, I have been working from home as it was a short week in the Swiss office so it gave me the chance to do some local running and get to the track on Friday night.  I’ve been getting used to my new Fenix 3 (I bought it from GoPro4Hire after seeing them recommended on Facebook), and whilst I am still pressing the wrong buttons at times we’re starting to bond nicely.  We went for a nice run on a local trail together using the course navigation functionality and he beeped at me as I went off course and carried on up the trail rather than turning left across a field and we’ve been for plenty of walks to the shops and back with my steps being logged.

On Friday I was scheduled to do some 3 minute sprintervals, so The Boyf and I headed to the track.  I decided that this would be a good opportunity to see how close in “accuracy” the Fenix 3 and Forerunner 620 were to each other.  I have it in quotes because let’s face it I am not going to sit here and work out exactly which one is the most correct taking into account them being work on different arms, hence the 620 technically travelling further on the outline of the track lane and the Fenix on the tighter inner line. It’s really just a bit of fun.  I also used this as an opportunity to have a play with the Zombies, Run! Intervals functionality.  The app has just released Season 4 (more on that in another post) but having never managed to get the intervals to work previously I thought I would see if they had fixed it.  They have, but the chat at the start of the session doesn’t count in the run time so whilst Fenix 3 & 620 were vibrating my interval changes in unison the Zombies were 90 seconds out of phase.

Do Workout Fenix 3 vs Forerunner 620All in all it was a lovely track session in the sun, a slight breeze and a bit of shade meant I didn’t bake and I didn’t have the left calf and foot issues I had suffered in Tuesday’s threshold session (my compression socks definitely suit me better than ankle socks).  I noticed from early on in the session that my 620 seemed to be pacing on the fast side.  It does this sometimes but as I have got better about understanding my running body I have improved at understanding what pace I am running at.  Not that I could run and tell you exactly my pace but I can tell by feel if I am running at 6:25/km or 5:30/km if presented with those choices.  So today I went with the Fenix 3 as my pace indicator for the intervals and pretty much managed my planned 4:49/km reps.  It was tough towards the end, especially the final 10 minutes back at my base pace but the training is designed to get the most benefit out of my training time without me descending into junk miles and it works, so I suffer in silence (well with a slight wheeze).

It would seem my right arm was running further & faster than my left today #fenix3 versus #forerunner620 #head2head
It would seem my right arm was running further & faster than my left today #fenix3 versus #forerunner620 #head2head
Working on my knee tan
Working on my knee tan

Saturday meant a trip to Thetford parkrun to finally meet Dr Sean Radford of TrainAsONE.  It was a lovely course, a wiggly, multi-lap mass of slight confusion (I wouldn’t want to be a front-runner here) and it gave us a good chance to chat as we ran along at my current base pace.  I’m really please with how my training has been going with TrainAsONE, for a while I had my worries that aiming to run an ultra in 6.5 hours with my longest training run was 75 minutes long and that my speed over shorter distances would suffer whilst my training plan was focused on marathon distances (as that has happened to friends I know following off the shelf marathon plans) but it hasn’t been the case.  The plan works for me, it has meant I have run my fastest 5km (27:44) and my longest distance, 29.7 miles (look away compulsive rounder-uppers) both whilst having a marathon as the target race as the basis for the programme.  I can’t wait to see how the software deals with what I plan on throwing at it over the rest of the year!  For my part I will continue to do what the plan tells me too, shuffling sessions slightly as needed to fit in with travel days and to accommodate parkrun and hope that I continue to get better at this running lark!

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2 Comments

  1. This is a pretty cool post. I’ve been working on getting back to a more regular exercise routine, but at this point I’m still in the place where I had a hard time scrolling beyond that amazing cinnamon roll and coffee! I loved interval training when I did it though, so I’ll definitely be checking these out. Thanks for the post!

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