Discovered that I had an 8 am meeting, so I needed to cut this morning’s workout short.  I just did a 30r22.  I am really beginning to feel the increase in volume.  It was hard work this morning.

Temp: 68F, Humidity: 41%

Then after work, I headed down to the gym to do my proper session.  The plan was for 4 x 5K / 5′ rest.  It occurred to me that this would take a lot of time.  Figure 19 minutes for each 5K, so that’s 76 minutes, plus 20 minutes of rest, plus a warm up and cool down.  That’s like 2 hours!

So the first change was cutting back the rests to 2 minutes.  I was also pretty sure that I would cut off this little adventure after 3 reps instead of 4.  Who the hell designed this workout anyway? (oh yeah, that’s me.)

I decided to target a 1:55 split.  I did a quick 1000m warmup speeding up from 2:10 to 2:05, 2:00, and 1:55 in 250m chunks.

Then it was into the first rep.  I had trouble hitting 1:55.  It was like trying to stay on a balance beam.  I would end up at 1:53 or 1:57.  Of course I decided to stick with 1:53.  By the time I got through 4000m, I knew that I was in deep trouble for the next rep.

I sure was!  I started off trying to ht 1:55 again, but within the first 2000m, I gave up the ghost.  I slowed down to 2:00, then sped back up, then kind of settled around a 1:57 pace and miserably ground out the rest of the meters.  It was awful.

After that I was done.  I did a cool down in the last 5K.  Starting at 1:55 for the first 1000m, then slowing down to 2:00, then 2:05.  It wasn’t until I was rowing at 2:10 pace that my HR started to come back down to a normal kind of rate.

What went wrong?

1. Too aggressive pace, should be 1:56 or slower
2. Slides.  I think I am less efficient on slides for middle distance work. I either need to slow down and work out the kinks or get the erg off the slides.
3. Big volume increase with 4 sessions in the past 48 hours.
4. Probably pushing the 30r22 too fast.  They are meant to be low intensity recovery sessions.  I’ll do them at 180W.

Tomorrow:  30r22 at 180W in the morning, 3 x 20′ at 185W in the afternoon