Not so Comfortable Speed

Not so Comfortable Speed

19 PAX at Swift on Tuesday morning set off into the mild chill of the gloom that makes running so enjoyable.  We were instructed to find some Comfortable Speed, but we were left with anything but comfortable legs the rest of the day.

The THANG:

PreBlast – “Comfortable Speed”

Deviations from the PreBlast:

• Pre-run crowd was still small, and Bratwurst eventually caught up with a non-2ndF pacing Depth Charge, Wild Turkey, Atlas, and Retread.
• Cones were missing along Rushmore.  Either the security guards patrolling Ballantyne Corporate Park scooped them up, a wild coyote mistook them for a giant candy corn, or YHC forgot them at home.  Instead, we figured out a reasonable pole-to-pole landmark that we’ll likely use on future segments unless YHC or someone else mysteriously paints the road with marks at 100m intervals.
• PAX fought through 3 rounds and make it back to COT in time to run around an extra building or two, and still have time for about 90 seconds of elbow plank as the Bagpipe PAX arrived in COT.

The Moleskin:

• 200m of Comfortable Speed, our pace target this morning was 1 mile race pace (check the PreBlast link for how to find your’s), sure feels good for 60 seconds or less.  Running strong, feeling tall, long strides, breath hardly elevates from a solid rhythm; it’s a perfect distance for feeling good about your speed.  Then some equal or longer distance recovery to regroup the PAX feels good at a very slow shuffle / mosey.
• Then comes the 2 minutes of PAIN.  At least a minute of feeling good and then you realize that you’re still only halfway there and starting to breathe much harder, legs and arms are feeling heavy (especially if you are pushing too hard to keep up with the faster PAX in front of you), and the end of the interval sounded by the 5 second countdown on the watch is glorious.  No slow shuffle or mosey right away unless you are Depth Charge who seems to hardly ever stop moving (turns out he threw the hammer in college track so he’s used to spinning and spinning and spinning – bet that was a good party trick in the day, which for him was last weekend), but a stop and hunch over, grab your knees, try to feel the oxygen coming back in your lungs, and eventually get the legs moving again to find that slow mosey to regroup everyone.  Then about 3 minutes into the recovery, it’s time to round the corner and start the cycle again.
• 14 of the 19 PAX workouts made it to Strava.  Of those 14, 7 actually contain Lap data that is critical for evaluating Interval workouts.  If you aren’t using Laps created by a programmed workout or manually hitting the Lap button, then you’re only getting total distance of your workout (I feel average pace per mile is irrelevant for interval workouts), and wasting your money on your GPS watch.  You could have just asked your buddy for total miles and saved $100 bucks or more.  And you don’t have to be a Premium Strava member to view Lap data in Strava.  Either use a desktop browser to Strava.com, desktop mode of your mobile browser, or your watch’s native mobile app (Garmin’s mobile app has this).  I personally don’t feel it’s worth paying Strava to get the lap data in their mobile app, but it sure would be nice.  What it would show you is some data that would allow you other data heads to pontificate on items like this:
  • Difference = Bratwurst average pace on 2minute intervals were 0:18 sec per mile slower than average pace of 200m intervals
  • Possible reasons: YHC 2min pace average was under recent personal best mile by about 0:08, so the 2min intervals were an honest effort.  The 200m felt really good and not too fast, so perhaps my watch was just clocking them fast.  Or, my first 2minute interval was well under my average, and that put me in the pain locker for the next 2.   Or, I’m running the 200m too fast when I should be targeting a more even effort.
• Here are some other PAX results (these guys all have Lap data on Strava) of average pacing of the 200 meters vs. the 2 minutes.  This is the amount of time slower on the 2minute interval per mile vs. the 200m interval:
  • Das Boot = 0:23 sec slower
  • Atlas = 0:36 sec slower
  • Prohibition = 0:14 sec slower   <—- Virtual Trophy for most consistent
  • Retread = 0:39 sec slower
  • Wild Turkey = 0:33 sec slower
  • Voodoo = 0:29 sec slower
• On Strava, but no Lap data: Fletch, Tootie, Meatloaf, Fleetwood, Cheddar, Erector, Strange Brew
• Not posting to Strava, so they must not care about getting credit or accuracy of their effort for future training: Frasier (check your watch sync), Beer Goggles (Swift FNG?, so we’ll give him a pass), Depth Charge (not sure he even wears a watch), Pearl (FNG, so we’ll give him a pass), Picasso (admitted he’s a slacker)
• Props to Tootie for bringing out the FNG Pearl to Swift.  Way to start him off right.  Now, it’s all downhill from here (open to several interpretations).
• Welcome to Beer Goggles at Swift.  We look forward to having you again.
• For all you stats heads who want to see your official posting stats accumulate, I’m being guilted into once again writing Backblasts…  Apparently Strava isn’t enough…  PreBlasts aren’t enough… Free Workouts aren’t enough…  you’ll at least have your attendance recorded now!