So yesterday's run was supposed to be a 10k time trial. I did my warmups and planned on doing 6 laps + 200m around the 1 mile bark loop trail. Starting off, I took it a little easy at an 8:45 pace, which felt okay. My 2nd loop was about an 8:50, but the 3rd was a 9:07. After that, my legs had nothing left in them at all. Last 3 miles were 9:20, 9:43, and 9:58. Total: 55:37 or a 9:16 average, but it felt like HELL. Just a bit over a month ago, I cheerfully ran an "easy slow" 9 miles at a 9:22 pace and felt great. My last 10k in an Oly triathlon was 50:29 (8:24 pace), and that's after over an hour of biking and some swimming thrown in, not just a running time trial. WTH??
So I'm left wondering what the heck is wrong. I slept well, ate well, I feel healthy and rested. Why is my endurance shot to hell? I'm in my 5th week of the Crossfit Endurance plan, and I was hoping that I would at least be on par with what I was doing beforehand.
I've got a couple of theories going, but only time will tell which is right:
1) It was a fluke, we all have bad days and heaven knows, I've had bad workouts before
2) My body is still adjusting to the much higher intensity of the Crossfit Endurance workouts. Given another month or two, I will have adapted better and will be way faster
3) Intense workouts are great, but my body is really built for endurance, it's what it does best. So I'm short-circuting my natural abilities by focusing on faster work, and that's why I'm now slower.
4) All this short fast stuff has just shot my endurance to hell and my Oly triathlon in August is going to be a death slog of epic proportions.
Needless to say, I'm hopeful that it's #1 or #2. I've committed to this CFE plan until my Oly triathlon on August 23. If I'm wrong, that means I've only got about 3 weeks afterward to try to regain some endurance before my half-Iron in September. It's a gamble. Stay tuned and we'll see how it turns out...
5 comments:
Robin...interesting. Very interesting. I have my doubts about CFE's efficacy in the longer-distance events and I am probably one of the few people that consider an Olympic-distance triathlon to fall in that category.
However, I think it has potential in the sprint-distance events and that's what I'll be testing when my season starts this fall. I'm starting my CFE work this week with a lot of build-up on the swim, bike and run to get ready to hit the full CFE work in August...with the first race in early September.
Keep up the good work and good reporting!
Good reports, stick with it, be patient. If and it's big IF it doesn't work out you will only know by getting to the end. Best of luck and chin up. You are doing it.
Everyone has a bad workout. I'm curious to see which number it is as well. Also, to add another possiblity, you've only came to crossfit twice since 6/12/09. Thats a long break from Crossfit. (because of vacation) CFE is Crossfit first, then supplementing with CFE. And now that I think about it, I've forgotten to send you what the WOD's are.... oops. make sure to remind me.
Oh. Also. I just sent a copy of this link to Brian to see what he thinks - I know what he might ask. What about overtraining?
I thought about overtraining, but I don't think that's it. For one thing, I'd been on vacation the week previous, which to me felt kind of like when you taper for a race. Generally it leaves you feeling refreshed and stronger. More than a week's break and you start to feel stale, but I was working out during vacation (kayaking, hiking, swimming, running, and come to think of it doing yardwork and moving sandbags for my mom). So I don't think I was either overtrained or undertrained. Didn't feel that way at least and I usually have a fairly good radar for that.
In general, my training load is far less than its been in the recent past, so I dismissed that as a possibility.
But see my above post on anemia. I'm thinking that is probably it, or a big part of it.
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