Thursday, January 21, 2010

To the Max

Yesterday my prescribed workout was a max HR test... it was a one-mile warm up followed by one mile "As fast as I can possibly go for one mile, and then really pour it on for the last 300 meters." I did this on the treadmill, which give me distances in miles and fractions thereof, so I interpreted the last 300 meters as the last about .17 miles. Yeah it's a bit off if you do the math, but it's close enough.

Anyway, I figured as I headed into this workout that I'd do the test as prescribed and then get in another 2 or 3 miles just to make it worth my time. The thing was, I was supposed to leave it "all on the track (or treadmill in this case)." And I did. I got done, took about a 2 minute break, then started back up. Yeah, I could barely make it through another half mile. I ended up with a log entry of 2.5 miles and 23:56 (the warm up and cool down were really slow!)

Anyway, the reason I'm writing about this isn't just to put some words down on the HR test. I was thinking about my best 5k, last year at the Art City 5k in Springville. It's the only 5k I run in a given year, so I like to go "all out" and see how much I can PR by. The thing is, I've never gone "all out" like I did yesterday in a 5k. I figure it's supposed to hurt like it hurt yesterday... I really need to try that out and find my true "5k race pace" I think. I wonder how fast I can really go. I've never felt like that at the end of a 5k. After all, it's only a 3 mile run, right. He he... yeah. Like yesterday was "only 2 miles"... right.

1 comment:

The Boring Runner said...

Eesh, that doesn't sound fun at all. So, was your HR at the end of the 1 mile all out supposed to be your max? Or do you have to add a certain % to that too?