April 9th, 2009 – Threshold 1

Threshold training!  Ugh!  This is the first week to start these and after taking almost the entire week off after the race (I forgot to pack my watch for my trip and couldn’t do any monitored training in Chicago) I wasn’t exactly sure how well my body would react to this first foray into Zone 4 as part of my formal training.  On top of that, the blister on my left foot was still somewhat annoyed.  Not raised, but the dead skin was just itching to tear and for all I knew there was deeper blister underneath.

I got to the gym and really felt pretty good about it.  I manage to feel better when I run even if I’m nervous about it leading up to it.  Having had the rest, I was even a bit less stiff as I stretched out before I got started.  It had the potential to be a very interesting run.

Threshold 1 is an intense workout.  After a 5 minute warm up, I do intervals of one minute in each of zone 1, 2, 3, and then 4.  After that, I do two minutes of cool down in zone 1 again and repeat.  Of course, that’s what I was supposed to do.  What I had programmed into the watch meant the cool down was in zone 2 and that made the run far more erratic and hard to manage from a heart rate perspective.  The drop from zone 4 to zone 2 was bad enough (zone 4 starts at 173 beats per minute and zone 2 ends at 156) but to then have to figure out how to keep it from bottoming out in zone 2 (141 beats per minute) and then turn around and slow it down to between 130 and 140 was not trivial.  Far too erratic.

Housekeeping data:  7.7 miles in 70 minutes for a 9:05 per mile average, 821 total calories.  Now that’s a slow pace, granted.  But, because of the drop from 4 into 2 and then 2 into 1 I had to walk a few at 15 minute miles which dropped the average mile pace.  I know for at least the first three zone 4 minute intervals I was running at 5:52 per mile, or 10.2 miles an hour.  Smoking fast and I am not sure how long I could have sustained that pace, but it just showed me that I was in much better shape than I’d thought.

I spent a bit of time reading TV so I didn’t really pay attention to the music on the Nano.  The closed captioning for ‘The Office’ was adequate to let me get a sense of how the Michael Scott Paper Company was going and that at least for the time being, there was no sign of him going back to Dunder Mifflin.  Pop culture junkie to say the least!

Got back to the house and yes indeed the damned blister had torn open.  At least there seemed to be no new blister so perhaps it was just the skin getting rubbed away.  I still worry that these new shoes were the wrong choice and that I’m due for a lot of pain over the next 9 weeks.  Oh well.  Lesson learned I suppose.  But, I will say that my new socks, which were part of the prize at the race, are quite comfortable and easy to run in.  If I could just figure out a decent lacing or tightness of the laces on my foot, I’d really be good to go.

Cheers!