I am plugging along with the 10K plan from Matt Fitzgerald's 80/20 Running. At the beginning of the book he says, "It's really hard for people to run as slowly as they need to for the low-intensity parts of this program." I nodded serenely at his warnings and thought, "Well, it's lucky I'm so good at following directions. I'm sure I won't have any trouble with that."
It turns out that it is really hard to run as slowly as I'm supposed to for the low-intensity parts of this program. Who knew??
There are three specific things that I am trying to figure out. One is how to fit six weekly workouts into a life with five children and a tenure-track job and a retreat team position. The second is how to tweak the long runs to account for the fact that I'm slower than his target audience. I want to get a couple of actual 10K runs in before the race, and his plan as written doesn't get me there. (If I were running at an 8:30 pace I'd be golden, but...I'm not running a 10K at an 8:30 pace.) The third is how to handle ups and downs in how a run feels. I experience predictable increases in perceived difficulty that correspond to hormonal fluctuations. (Dead corpus luteum = dead legs.) My last few runs have gone exactly according to plan, which is how I like it. I need a better response for the blah days.
I guess, now that I write it out, that Matt Fitzgerald would tell me to listen to my body on the blah days. If it really hurts to run a mile, then maybe the best I can do that day is a vague approximation of the planned workout. If I can't keep my heartrate in the target range without walking, my body is telling me something.
Most of the time, the scheduled runs are a great match for my abilities -- pleasantly tough but not eviscerating. This is SO much more motivating than the Run Less Run Faster plan, also known as the What Fresh Hell Is This? training plan. So far, nothing hurts at all (superstitiously, I am wondering if it is imprudent to type that out loud) -- great news given my history.
I am feeling kind of like a slacker, since so much of the running is low-intensity. I am very curious to see what kind of 10K time I'll end up with this year. Only a month until I find out...
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