Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics… i.e., The Truth

• Posted: July 2, 2008
• |
• Author: Shéamus
• |
• Filed under: Workouts
• |
• Tags: 30 Minute Days

Here are a bunch of excuses:

• I’ve worked eight of the last nine nights, from 10pm through 9am
• Last night, I had to deal with a person who had experienced a complete mental breakdown, but remained active - and to be honest, quite, quite mad - for eight hours straight
• I moved my planned surgery at the dentist today, but still only slept from 10am-2pm
• Today was the first time I’ve ran in the rain
• It was cold - at least 10 degrees colder than yesterday
• I’m physically and mentally exhausted
• I’m almost 37

Here’s the reality - my new Garmin Forerunner 50 arrived today. The watch is great - really easy to use right out of the box, and I’ll be doing a full review soon - but it revealed to me a sorry, and painful truth.

In my 30-minute run today, I averaged 8:26/mile.

8:26.

Google Maps had me down at about 7:20. I knew that was totally wrong, but I figured I was good for 8 minutes/mile. I set out tonight, Garmin on wrist, and a quick glance down showed my pace at 7:34/mile. “Hmmm, maybe Google was right,” I thought.

About three minutes later, however, as my true pace revealed itself, I couldn’t quite believe it - nasty old Garmin had me down at about 8:40. I picked up the speed a bit and became semi-obsessive with my pace for the next minute or two. Eventually, I had to switch it off, as clock-watching never ends well.

Here are the promised stats. First, my splits. Each lap is exactly one mile.

Here’s a chart showing my speed:

It’s pretty easy to see where I struggled, and that’s in miles two and three. My average pace there was a shade over 8:35. I finished strongly - mostly thanks to another runner having the cheek to move ahead of me just as he was starting his run - but had to hit 9mph, or about 6:40/mile, to put him in his place. I maintained that for about 70 seconds, and it moved my average for the last half-mile to 8:08.

Still not great, but better, and at least I know I have something in the tank for that all-important sprint to the line. But I can make all the excuses I want (and I kind of did, above) - at the end of the day, the numbers don’t lie. Data is data. Stats are stats. The truth hurts.

Now, being fair to myself, this is just one day. One day when I was very, very tired. And I’m almost 37, you know. So over the course of a week or so I should get a better idea of the reality of my running pace. But it’s clear that I’m going to have to inject a few interval/speed workouts sooner than I would have expected (or, indeed, liked) just to get my body to a level where it actually knows what going fast means.

I’m not looking for Tyson Gay speeds, but I’d like my first marathon to be a 3:30 experience if at all possible. As it is, my current speed projects me at 4 hours and 13 minutes, which reads like something my mother might do.

It’s early days. This is, after all, essentially the end of my first month. What’s clear to me, however, is that despite losing a lot of weight in the past 6-7 months, I haven’t lost enough. I need to be lighter to run faster. And to be lighter, I not only need to burn more fat, I need to get rid of some muscle, too. Muscle is heavy. It’s slowing me down. Even at 178 pounds, I have too much of it.

I need to take a leaf out of TJ Tollakson’s book and catabolize some of that hard-earned, but no longer functional tissue.

That’s something I’ll be working on, and expect a post on that in the near term.

• (2) Comments
• Permalink
• RSS 2.0
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•