I had an early morning 75min run planned today that included 45 mins at 1/2 IM race pace. I'm a big believer in practicing race day efforts. As my youth ice hockey coaches relentlessly preached, "you can't expect to show up on game day and just turn on the switch". By practicing and training appropriately, one is able to take the guess work out of race day performance. One still has to be "on" at any given race, however if you haven't been able to dial in on specific key workouts during training, it's going to take some pretty amazing luck to be able to pull it off on race day.
Today's session was a nice effort that felt a lot more manageable after my Friday track sufferfest. It still amazes me how the human body adapts to VO2 training sessions. As long as one recovers properly, the fitness gains can be pretty substantial. The perceived effort relative to pace following a VO2 max workout day is almost always a significant jump up in performance. In addition, having the ability to train with others during these hard efforts is a tremendous advantage. The key workouts are not always fun during the effort, however the dividends paid back later in the race season are unparalleled.
Today's session was a nice effort that felt a lot more manageable after my Friday track sufferfest. It still amazes me how the human body adapts to VO2 training sessions. As long as one recovers properly, the fitness gains can be pretty substantial. The perceived effort relative to pace following a VO2 max workout day is almost always a significant jump up in performance. In addition, having the ability to train with others during these hard efforts is a tremendous advantage. The key workouts are not always fun during the effort, however the dividends paid back later in the race season are unparalleled.
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