Day 44: Speed Endurance

Workout

Type: 2x2x200m
Intensity: 90% at 27.23s
Rest: [2'] [5']

Thoughts

Timings: 28.88 ? ? ? ~ 28.8

The much dreaded Speed Endurance is here. I’ve always had this fear of such training. Well if you’ve done it before, then you know how ‘painful’ it is right.

If you’ve not tried it, you’re more than welcome to join me anytime. I think the definition of pain will have a new meaning for you with just one session with me, haha.

Well after my short nap, which was never enough always, I dragged myself out of bed to the stadium.

After nearly two weeks of training, I observed my warmup session is around an hour. Well if you think its that long, it is. Recommended warmup session should be around 30-45 minutes, but I’ve an old rickety body, I need the extra warmup.

The usual warmup as with other days, I would usually jog to the stadium (5min), then a short two rounds around the stadium (5min), dynamic warmup (30min) and lastly drills (20min).

I think it doesn’t matter how long your warmup is but its important to have your body all ready, flexible, reactive enough for the actually training session. That’s why I never do my workouts in the morning, I find that my body is much ‘stiffer’.

Focusing back on the actual training, speed endurance session only lasted less than 20 minutes. Yup only a fraction of time compared to the warmup. That’s how quality training goes.

Somehow or rather during my runs today, my clock is having an ‘attitude’. Out of the four running sets, I’m only able to clock one run only, while the rest of the three, there was no timing. Weird because I thought I had pressed the stopwatch correctly.

I ran 28.8 seconds for the first run. This was a 85% effort when I needed to run a 90% effort at 27.23s. The rest of the run I felt I ran faster. I can’t be sure as there was no timing.

The first set of the run, I’ve yet to feel the lactic acid build-up, it was still bearable. Then the second set it finally hit me. I guess the strong headwind contributed to the ‘pain’ as I had to put extra effort in the run.

When I completed the last set, I was panting like crazy and my butt felt like there’s acid there. BAM! Objective of today’s training met. That’s speed endurance and that’s the pain I’m talking about.

I went immediately to the toilet to soak myself with water and cool down with the fan in the loo pointed in my direction. But surprisingly my recovery was fast. Less than 10 minutes, and I felt somewhat ok. So I proceed to do my body conditioning before heading home.

So this whole two weeks, my running training session I’ve not once hit the designated timing as I planned. I do hope by next week, it will be better. My body will hopefully have adjusted to the current training load.