Friday 16 July 2010

The ups and downs of altitude

As ever I don't seem to get online to write blogs posts as regularly as I would have liked, although I have been online quite regularly between training sessions... I have been productive in that I have started putting together a new website http://www.leemerrienrunning.com/ which isn't finished but it's getting there.

Anyway training seems to have turned a corner this week, I got solid session in on the track on Tuesday despite a having a minor dizzy spell when I woke up that morning. I ran a controlled session, 3 sets of ( 2 x 1k + 5 x 400m) with my marathon roomies. I forgot to mention them in my last post...I'm rooming and training with Ben Moreau & Martin 'Tantastic' Williams, Martin runs for Tipton! (it's all about the tan there apparently:). Times for the track session were nothing spectacular but good enough to achieve the abjective, 1k reps were around 2.55 and 400m reps were from 68-66 mostly. We had some great weather than morning too which helped, although the weather has been strange at times...on Sunday we ran our long run in temp's in the high 20's, only for the weather to change to heavy rain all afternoon with hail stones, which were like golf balls at times!
The other key this session this week was a some marathon paced workout, with we did yesterday morning. Ben & Martin were doing 45mins at M/pace within a long run while i was doing 90mins at M/pace so we managed to worked it so were all together for 45mins at race effort. Also when I say M/pace, it is more marathon intensity, I have been tracking heart rates during these types of sessions as the altitude plays a big factor. I didnt quite get this right last week and subsequently struggle a little on my marathon workout but this week was much better. The lake route (which we used for the marathon paced work) is the fairly flat compared with the other trails we have been using but it is still has a few hills and of course it is at 1500m altitude so I was happy to average just over 5.20 min miling for my 90mins and feel quite controlled.

I've attached a few photo's below of our accommodation and some of the places we have been training...
Early stages of our track session this week. The track is approx 2000m above level.
The View from our accommodatio complex...
Looking across the Lake (approx 1500m altitude) were we have done our marathon pace sessions and long runs.

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