I've just returned from a week of warm weather training in Queensland.
The shorts and sandals attire was luxurious after experiencing late
winter snow and freezing temperatures in Canberra. While I was in Hervey
Bay I raced the Parkrun 5k (starting at the earlier time of 7.00 AM to
beat the heat!). Happily, I ran a little faster than I have been
recently — 23:44, finishing 34th in the field of 198 and 1st
VM60-64. My fastest 5k of 2017 remains the 23:32 run at the Tuggeranong
Parkrun in March. I was happier with the Hervey Bay result because
expectations were low while warming up with ordinary feeling legs. I
thought anything under 25 minutes would be a pass mark.
I lined up a little way back from the front and it was a few hundred
metres before the crowd thinned out. Before the start some pacers were
introduced, one being John Street to pace '24 minutes' (John's VM75-79
record is a very impressive 21:02). Around the 1k sign I caught up to
John and his small group which included a couple of youngsters. My
Garmin split afterwards showed 4:37 at 1k. I followed John's group to
the turn with the pace feeling okay. After the turn a couple of runners
went ahead so I chased them all the way to the finish. Remaining splits
were 4:47, 4:45, 4:50 and 4:45 so it had been a fairly evenly run race.
John finished in 23:54.
I'm still fine-tuning the Verheul Method of training. My legs seem to
have changed physically — being happy running in the range of
4:00 to 4:40 per km pace for most of the short intervals. It's becoming
natural to run at those speeds and steady running at my former 'general'
running pace (5:45 to 6:00 per km) feels awkward. I think I'll
experiment with a mid-week run of an hour or so of even paced running so
a steady effort remains as natural as reactive faster running. At the
moment I'm walking my recoveries (rather than jogging). My thinking is
that I don't want the legs to become 'confused' with what they're being
trained to do — run lightly and reactively at 5k race pace.
What is the ideal distance for Verheul intervals? I'm liking 250 metres.
Typically that distance takes me one minute, ten seconds to run
(4:40/km pace), short enough that I can remain aerobic and concentrate
on form and reactivity for the full distance of the interval while not
so long that I become tired. It's very easy however, to dip into
anaerobic energy stores when running 'fast' over such short distances.
My natural inclination is to run on the fast side, closer to 4 minute km
pace. I think for the Verheul Method to be effective the temptation to
'overspeed' needs to be avoided at all costs. Running a large volume of
intervals tempers enthusiasm for speed but there's probably a 'just
right' volume for each runner. Yesterday I ran 20 x 250m, which felt
okay, but there's a danger of running tired and losing reactive form
towards the latter stages of large volume interval sessions. I'll continue to experiment and let you know how things go.
Shortly after the start of the Hervey Bay Parkrun 5k
The 1k long Urangan Pier made a good warm-up location
