Broke the only-grass diet to go to Lacy with the team and run 2x10min tempo with a 5-minute break. When Scott explained this workout, he said he wanted 2x10 minutes at "between 3k and 5k race pace." I thought he was joking. I pointed out that Anton, Chief and I all run 3000m in less than 10 minutes, so there's no way we could possibly do 10 minutes at that pace. "Oh yeah," he said. "I guess you do. That's why it's as slow as 5k pace."
I don't think I could necessarily do a better job than Scott. Coaching in itself is hard, especially if you don't have much experience with it. You need to balance expectations and realism, specialization and cohesiveness, rapport and authority. But I do know I could avoid things that are brazenly insane.
I wound up running by myself for the two periods. The hung back on the first, running between Chief and Anton. I went ahead on the second. Laps were somewhere around 2:40 for the "short loops".
It felt tough, but I think all my workouts will continue to feel tough for a few weeks while I try to adapt to this higher volume of running. I was able to stay consistent, and reasonably smooth, and so that's enough to leave me encourage by the day.
Thursday, February 26, 2009 (30 am, tempo pm)
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With regard to Scott's instructions, I completely agree that they were crazy. Fortunately, someone starting out 2x10 minutes at 3k pace would quickly discover that it was impossibly hard. Unfortunately, this discovery process would be exhausting and demoralizing.
However, I think the greater damage here comes from inferring the 'reverse instructions': If the pace that you can run for 2 x 10 minutes with 5 minutes recovery (at Lacy, on grass, on Thursday) is supposed to be your track 5k pace, then you certainly can't expect to race very fast. 2:40 for short loops works out to roughly 17:10 pace.
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