I finished the second week of Phase II more or less successfully. My 2 x 8 x 200 went fine, though I *was* ready to be done after the 16th rep. Rep times were 43, 38, 42, 37, 39, 39, 38, 39, (jog), 38, 40, 38, 40, 40, 40, 38, 36 (all GPS measured, some hills, 0.12 mile). As usual, all ran by feel. I didn't know any of the splits until until I downloaded the data.

The long run was quite bad. I went early in the morning without enough sleep. I started at 7am. This was after lots of rain on the day before and during the night, so humidity was truly 100%. It was raining under the trees. The temperature was between 70 and 80 degrees, increasing, but higher temps actually felt better, because humidity was falling.

I started a bit too fast, and didn't drink enough. I was completely saturated with sweat after the first hour (like, running down on my legs). I had a bout of trots (fortunately I was in my neighborhood). The last bit was a real struggle, but I managed to finish it at an average pace of 7:54/mile. I was badly dehydrated. Hopefully I can recover by tomorrow for my next VO2 max workout. I'd love to ace that at least once out of three.

So, as suggested, next week is the last Phase II week. Phase III will up the VO2 max training to do 5 x 4 min, and swaps out the 200's for threshold miles. I wish I could test myself in a race.

I ran a second 5 x 3 minute workout yesterday. This is, 20 minutes warmup, 5 x 3 minutes interval at VO2 max pace with 2 minutes of jogging in between for recovery, and 20 minutes of cooldown. I do it entirely by feel, except when my pace goes out of the 5:40-6:20 interval, my watch warns me.

I felt pretty tired by the last one, and I had to speed up multiple times to keep myself in the correct speed range. My paces were 6:07, 6:02, 6:09, 6:16, 6:18. Of course averaging paces is probably not the best way to measure performance, but due to the low precision of distance for these intervals, it is probably the best we can do: 6:10. This is worse than last week's 6:07, but maybe not statistically significantly worse. These correspond to VDOTs 51.8, 51.3 respectively. The corresponding 200 rep time would be 43 seconds!

It is important to note though that these are not run on a track! There are some hills, wind, etc. So track times would definitely be better.

Clearly there is a mismatch in aspects of my training. My endurance and speed are fine, my threshold is OK, my VO2 max is bad. This is OK. This is what training is for.

I successfully finished week 1 of Phase II.

It has two workouts: a VO2 max with 3 minute hard bursts, and one with 200 m reps.

The 200's are not hard, but there are 16 of them (with 5 minutes of jogging halfway). Still, I somehow managed to crank them out fast: 38, 41, 39, 39, 39, 39, 35, 39; 39, 36, 39, 37, 38, 37, 38. One split is missing, because I messed up and I actually ran it during the 5 minute jog (and then I skipped the first fast interval of the second block). This was, of course, run on the road, so there may be GPS error.

On the other hand, the 3 minute intervals were not that great. The mile paces were 5:55, 6:03, 6:13, 6:09, 6:17. This does show that I lack fitness. I have strength and endurance, just not fitness. It's OK. I can fix this. And maybe it was just not a good day.

The VO2max run was on Tuesday, the 200's on Friday, and I did feel that my legs were trashed for my long run on Sunday. I also got a bit dehydrated... stupid Parklands are trying to kill people by keeping water fountains closed. But my endurance is actually fine. I had no trouble keeping my pace despite the issues.

Two more weeks of this. I'm getting into shape for nothing...

Phase I of Daniels's Gold plan is almost done! Two days left, and no more workouts, just an easy and a long run.

The most important signals are the threshold runs: 20 minutes each week. I decided to run them by feel, just 20 minutes, no splits, and this worked well. The averages were 6:29/mile in week 1, 6:35/mile in week 2, and 6:24/mile in week 3. Week 2 was relatively warm (73 degrees); this shouldn't matter much, but I had no water on me, and I didn't drink after the warmup, so who knows. I'm afraid I may have pushed week 3 a bit too hard (beyond threshold), though it felt like I could do at least 5 more minutes, so maybe not. It was around our house block, so it also wasn't the easiest psychologically.

All this points to 53-54 VDOT, which is not bad at all; it is definitely good sign for a strong fall marathon, if one is held. But until then, let's just continue the standard fitness training; so VDOT doesn't matter all that much. I'll run everything by feel.

Phase II:
M: 75 min E
T: 20 min E + 5 x 3 min H w/ 2 min jg + 20 min E
W: 1 or 2 E runs, 30-40 min each
T: Rest
F: 20 min E + 8 x 200 R w/ 200 jg + 5 min E + 8 x 200 R w/ 200 jg + 5 min E
S: 60 min E (1 or 2 runs)
S: 120 min L

I dropped the strides. I just hate them, they don't make me any faster IMO, there is not a good way to do them, so this is it.

I wish I found a track where I don't have to hop the fence and worry about trespassing charges.