Last night's workout called for 5 x 800m at 5K pace with recovery at marathon pace instead of a slow jog. The humdity was high again last night in NYC so I decided to move down a group and do the workout with the 7:30 group. Terrence was pacing last night, I've never run with him before so I didn't know what to expect. The slower pace felt comfortable and I didn't feel any signs of an asthma flare up. I thought to myself, finally I will be able to complete a workout. Split for the first interval was 3:39.
During the faster recovery Terrence asked the group if we wanted to go a little faster. I thought to myself, uh oh, here we go again. The 2nd interval did feel faster but I was able to keep up. Split for the 2nd interval was 3:33. Defintely faster but I felt like if Terrence kept the pace around 3:33 - 3:35 I could defintely finish the workout. Once again, Terrence asked if we wanted to go faster. Some in the group said yes, I was in the minority. Terrence picked up the pace again and we finished the 3rd interval in 3:30. That's the pace I ran last week with the 7:00 minute group. I started to have trouble breathing but joined the group for the 4th interval which we also finished in 3:30. After this one, I knew I had enough. I simply couldn't get any air into my lungs. I did the 400m recovery and began the run back to Paragon.
This is the 3rd week in a row where I couldn't finish the workout. I know that high humidity and asthma do not mix. Speed night is the only time this happens. I can crank out long and tempo runs at a decent clips. It's the short bursts of speed that do me in. On my way home I Tweeted that I didn't finish the workout. Both Scott and Allen commented that I shouldn't think about it too much and that I'll better when cooler weather finally comes back.
What pissed me off more about last night was the way Terrence was pacing the group. If he's there to run the intervals based on 7:30/mi then he should stick to that. Do not ask the group if they want to go faster. What's the point of splitting up into pace groups if the pacer is not going to stick to the pace? If others in the group wanted to run at a faster pace then they should move up to the faster group. I spoke to Brad about this afterwards and he agreed. He paced the 7:00 group and his splits were consistenly at 3:30, right where they should be. He didn't ask the group to go faster. He stuck to the pace.
Ok, enough ranting...so where does this leave me? As long as the humidity is high, I resigned to that fact that I cannot run with same intensity as I can when it's cooler. I'm going to focus on doing as many quality intervals as I can. When I feel like I've had enough I will stop. It's not worth putting myself in the ER just so I can complete a workout.
2 comments:
Yeah, that's the way it goes with speed workouts. Depending on the leader and people in front, groups will go faster than advertised. Annoying.
Last week I was in the 8:00-8:30 group (NYRR running class), and the leader then proceeded to announce that we would be running 7:45 pace. Huh? I lagged and struggled a bit, but in the end, still felt like I had a great workout and ran much harder than I would on my own. That's why I keep coming back, despite the annoyances.
Friend, I felt the heat, too. It is discouraging not to complete a workout but the thing to remember is that first, we're not saving lives and second, the effort you put out on a humid day is probably equal to or greater than what you'd do over more intervals at a faster pace in the Fall or Winter.
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