I added an extra strength training workout this week and felt it in my legs when I went to do the Monitor workout on TR (6 x 6 @ sweet spot). My legs didn’t feel great today, during the 3 minute warm up my legs didn’t feel any better. During 2 minute warm up interval, my legs felt terrible and my PRE was higher than normal. Basically, at the beginning of the workout my legs felt about as heavy as they would towards the end of the last interval. So I packed it in and foam rolled instead
So two questions; 1) With what I described would you have skipped the work out? 2) Generally speaking at what point how does everyone decide to drop a workout?
As for the weight lifting, I learned my lesson and won’t add the second workout in.
I went on an “8 mile” easy trail run recently (turned into 11.5 miles with a lot of extended downhill towards the end, ie a quad buster). Walking down stairs for the next week sucked but I made sure I was out doing light running the next 2-3 days to keep the legs moving. The only time I would consider dropping a workout would be injury, but I have modified workouts a number of times as needed. My mileage didn’t change much, I just ran them slower and shifted the medium run by a day or two. After 3-4 days my legs were fine but it served as a good reminder that I need to work on leg strength and increasing my cadence when running down hills.
At this time of year when I am doing base, some strength work and heading into build phase soon, I am tending to ditch any session if I feel weary / heavy legged or can feel a niggling injury lurking… I have worked on through these before and after perhaps 6 weeks of managing it starts to fall to bits…
Always leads to guilt tho…
At this time of year when I am doing base, some strength work and heading into build phase soon, I am tending to ditch any session if I feel weary / heavy legged or can feel a niggling injury lurking… I have worked on through these before and after perhaps 6 weeks of managing it starts to fall to bits…
Always leads to guilt tho…
I made the same mistake as you Shadwell. I pushed through a niggling twinge in my knee. Turned into full blown ITBS and I lost last year to recovery. I’m trying to play it much safer this time, and that’s one of the reasons I dropped the workout. Sounds like I made the right decision.
I always allow about 20 mins to pass - sometimes I just feel better and all is good, but when it doesn’t: run: if I can’t hit the prescribed pace for the intended workout. So if I’m doing a threshold session and I’m too tired, I just do a long slow run. And if I can’t hit the minimum “long slow run pace” on my long slow run, I stop, go home and sleep. bike: for tempo/sweet spot if I can’t hit the right watts, I do a longer easier ride. If I can’t ride at least 65% FTP I just stop and go home. Unless it’s a recovery ride, in which case I go as easy as I want to. swim: as soon as form starts to really break down I stop
I’ve never heard of a minimum long slow pace. How did you calculate yours? I run a marathon @ 4:50/km, and a lot of my long slow runs are done with my wife @ her pace, which is around 6:15/km. Is that too slow to get the desired outcomes from the workout?
I’ve never heard of a minimum long slow pace. How did you calculate yours? I run a marathon @ 4:50/km, and a lot of my long slow runs are done with my wife @ her pace, which is around 6:15/km. Is that too slow to get the desired outcomes from the workout?
I use McMillan calculator paces, based on a 5K or 10K regular TT. For a 3:24 marathon (your 4:50 pace), it recommends training paces as follows:
BUT I think spending some time with your wife while doing a workout is a great thing in itself, well worth doing in my opinion no matter what your pace! As long as you also do some long runs at around 5:30 pace. There is some physical benefit too regardless of pace. For example I broke my ribs 5 weeks before an IM race and all I could do was run 11 min/mile which was fine to retain some conditioning, and I was still able to run a 3:30 which wasn’t much slower than if I had been able to train fully. It just prevented me from completely detraining.
My answer was mainly around the OPs question of when do I cut it short. If I’m pushing my kids in a stroller, I don’t care about pace. But if I’m doing my important long run in prep for a race, I’ll stop running if I can’t do the minimum endurance pace.