PM road 10.1 solo, 1:06:33
Tuesday AM road 4 with Uta, 29:54, bit of a knot in my right shin.
PM 3.1 warm up, drills and strides, Moneghetti Fartlek around my normal Glendale route, covered 3.83 miles in the 20mins that is 8/100ths more than the last time out and more important it got me back into the finish area I have tended to view as being fit in the past. If I can get to a road called Woodhill ln, which is where gmap-pedometer says 4 miles is I have considered my self running well. Tonight I made it just a stride past the far side of Woodhill. 6/100ths shy of my best ever on this loop. 3.5 cool down, 25mins. 6x6 squats 105lbs up to 155lbs after.
Mona gives this Fartlek a good job!
Wednesday PM road 16, 1:45:06, ran in the light and in shorts and a t-shirt, crazy for this time of year.
Thursday AM 4.1 miles on road with Uta, first 1.4 with Melissa too, 30:54
Friday PM road 10.1 with Uta, 1:07:07, 6x6 dead lifts after 135lbs up to 185lbs.
Saturday AM road 6.2 with Uta, 45:04, cold 10 degrees wind chill around 0.
PM road 10.1 solo, 1:03:53, cold 15 degrees wind chill much colder.
Sunday Noon 3.5 warm up, 25:20, drills and strides, 4x2 miles with 3:00 recovery with drills in each recovery. 10:23.9 (5:03.2/5:20.7), 10:28.3 (5:05.2/5:23.1), 10:33.5 (5:09.2/5:24.1), 10:27(5:07.5/5:19.5). This is on a lollypop shaped out and back and the 2nd mile was pretty much all into the wind not only were they much slower but I was working much harder. This looks a bit worse then when I did this session a couple months back but using the garmin to measure made the loop 15 seconds longer than how it was measured on gmap which is what I used when I was doing this last. Also that wind killed me. 2.7 cool down in 21:00
Summary 92 miles for the week, two good workouts. Super happy with the mona this week. 8/100ths better than two weeks ago and only 6/100ths off my best on that loop is a great step in the right direction. Thursday and Friday were kinda crap as I was super tired and felt like I was getting sick but I took it easy, skipped a workout, took a ton of supplements- C, echinacea, congaplex, elderberry and as of right now, knock on wood, I'm not sick. This has been my basic theme as I'm coming back. I'm being very cautious. Focusing on being consistent, even if I'm consistently less than spectacular. I'm making no major setbacks my mantra. Deal with the fact that I'm not training how I want but really key up on just having a decent week every week. No injuries, no illnesses. If I can get though the winter like that I'll be one happy guy.
Summary 92 miles for the week, two good workouts. Super happy with the mona this week. 8/100ths better than two weeks ago and only 6/100ths off my best on that loop is a great step in the right direction. Thursday and Friday were kinda crap as I was super tired and felt like I was getting sick but I took it easy, skipped a workout, took a ton of supplements- C, echinacea, congaplex, elderberry and as of right now, knock on wood, I'm not sick. This has been my basic theme as I'm coming back. I'm being very cautious. Focusing on being consistent, even if I'm consistently less than spectacular. I'm making no major setbacks my mantra. Deal with the fact that I'm not training how I want but really key up on just having a decent week every week. No injuries, no illnesses. If I can get though the winter like that I'll be one happy guy.
4 comments:
Hey Nate, do you see in your experience some kind of correlation between the average pace of a "fair" Mona session (hard but where you not killing your self) and your 5k fitness?
I have seen you have run your recent indoor 5k some 18" faster per km than your last Mona. I am much slower than you (high 16') but i just ran last week a 5k which was 17 seconds faster per km than a Mona done the week before.
Is that kind of relation between those two paces stable in your experience - i.e can you normally get an idea of a 5k fitness from a recent Mona? I agree this workout is really an excellent way to assess where you are.
Thanks again for posting this blog - truly inspiring and a wealth of knowledge you sharing with all of us.
Happy running!
KAV- There certainly is some relationship. The Mona is a good test of your threshold and that is a big part of your 5k time. That said an exact time relationship I doubt it. I mean first you need to consider terrian. I would guess if I was on a perfectly flat loop I would go 3 or 4 seconds per K faster. Also if you are doing 5k specific workouts you can take a good chunk of time off your 5k without seeing much improvement in your mona. I would guess you could easily drop 3 to 5 seconds per K in your 5k with 6 weeks of weekly well planned 5k specific work and without getting any faster in your mona. That said if you are going along in your normal training and you see a 4 or 5 second per K improvement in your Mona I would expect that you would see an equivalent improvement in your 5k time.
-Nate
Hi Nate,
You've been writing a lot about progressing Mona. I'm wondering: where do you try and progress it? Are you trying to float faster or increase the pace of the repeats? Both? I've done the workout a little over a dozen times now and am trying to figure out where my focus should be. Thanks as always!
Matt, Progressing/improving workouts is a cornerstone belief of mine in training. If your not trying to get better at it why do you need to do it. Now that said, Mona who was a whole lot better then me on his worse day did them pretty steady and didn't worry about progressing them at least that I have seen him talk about it. Specifically in terms of this training cycle I was VERY out of shape. VERY VERY out of shape and I have been trying to build back up to some decent running. As such I have been working on improving both the efforts and recoveries. Basically just focusing on whichever one I felt ready to improve on in a given day.
Generally speaking you would focus on improving whatever your weak point was or you would focus on the speed if you were looking at 3k/5k racing and the recoveries if you were in a marathon or half marathon cycle.
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