Indoor intervals today.
About 6 miles in 55 minutes broken down as follows:
5:00 in Zone 1
10:00 in Zone 2
5 x (3:00 @ 6:40/mile/2:00 in Zone 1)
5:00 in Zone 1
10:00 in Zone 2
I’ve noticed a pattern… when taking on a hard interval workout I tend to feel and perform better during the latter half of the intervals. How do we account for this nonintuitive phenomenon?
My completely uninformed hypothesis is that this is about 85% psychological, 5% cognitive, and 10% physical.
Mostly, I’m relieved to have gotten past the midway point. Early in a tough workout, I am worried that I don’t have enough stamina to execute. Once I get going and can see the end in sight, my confidence grows tremendously.
A small part might be that I’ve gotten more comfortable with the technical elements of the run itself. A slightly larger chunk might be attributable to feeling slightly better and shaking off some rust, but generally, I would expect to feel worse as the workout progresses.
So yeah. Fear of failure.
These workouts are as much about building efficacy and belief that I can endure pain as they are about improving my current physical fitness level.
Next week’s Thursday workout is even more intense: 4×1-mile at just over 5K race pace with minimal rest. Yikes.
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