The Three Minutes Per Kilometre Running Spike

Yesterday was an ordinary Monday. When I got to Colovray I was struck by how warm it felt. I thought that summer broke. It didn’t. The heat is still here. It was interesting to run with the social run group because I felt slow and less energetic. Eventually I checked and saw that we were running faster than usual for a social run. We were running at 05:50 rather than the usual 06:30 minute per kilometre rate.

I also believe that I don’t like to do runs in the evening, especially not at the time at which I would usually be winding down and getting ready to eat dinner. Having said this I made sure to eat an hour before the run, and snack before the run and again between intervals.

It’s amusing that I do not like interval series. I don’t like them because I have to push hard, not once, but eight times, with a little break between before repeating the intervals.

During one interval we had to speed up for 30 seconds just as a fast runner overtook me so I tried to match the speed. I believe I got up to 3 minutes per kilometre for a few seconds, before being completely blown out for the next two to three repetitions.

I was running at about 3:30 min/km before spiking at 2:50 min/km or so before hitting the wall and really wanting the intervals to end.

It was interesting to see, after the speed spike, that I couldn’t recover as fast as sometimes. I don’t know whether this is because of fatigue or because I pushed harder than when I pace myself to myself. By this I mean that I pushed much harder than if I was assessing effort according to my owned perceived effort.

It’s interesting, after the fact, to look at the data, because according to the data I pushed harder than I perceived I was pushing. When running intervals you see the group speed away from you, so you feel weak, and lazy, but when you look at the data, according to your own abilities, the result is positive.