fartlek and intervals back to back

the week’s program was re-defined. the original 10k plan sees a slow fifth week, the training program was started two weeks earlier than this blog. but since next week includes traveling to Edinburgh - on the weekend actually, let’s see after the scottish running scene - and a birthday (no age reminders required, thanks) coming up, the slow week is next week, not this. hence a brisk start with two crispy sessions both mon and tue. normally you’d plan the week with intervals on tuesday and a fast run on friday or saturday. but latest training recommendations suggest to combine the tough parts, even into one training. the african gazelles such as tergat, gebrselassie & co put a fast run together with a hillytrail profile or bekele the world record holder over 5000 and 10000m ends his intervals with accelerations up to a 100m sprint speed.

since we’re not quite there to do the same, it doesn’t make sense to brag about it, … yet. we went for the toned down version, a fartlek on mon and intervals on tue.

the 16.6km fartlek went really well, found a new path along the laajalahti shores starting from the student bunkers in otaniemi to the crossing of ring one with the motorway to turku. great path, only that part is about 5km, the whole loop around laajalahti something like 15km or above depending on where you start and stop. not many runners out there anymore, the temperatures tanked in september now up here, around 8-10 degrees celsius (somewhere around 45 degrees farenheit), but dry, that’s good.

today again the 30+ lap head spinning exersize on the track, nicely portioned into 8 x 1000m efforts in 3:29 (yeah!) to 3:36 (not so yeah!), still eight, not ten as the training program (aka torture plan) says. not much progress on this front, each run feels the same, fast acceleration on the first meters, alright for the first 200m, some heavier panting between 300 and 400. at 500 you swear that it’s just half the distance yet. 500 - 700 is a fight, you try to stay with your rythm but breathing is really heavy now. a look at 800m at the intermediate time tells you that slowing down is not an option, but rather a sprint to the finish line is required. so you steam ahead gracious as a locomotive to the end of the effort.

Tags: fartlek, interval training