It has been two weeks since the 5k race that began the 30 Minute Runner project. In celebration of the two week milestone, I thought I would update the status of the project and my training since the race.
Overall, the training has gone well and has consisted of 30-35 minute easy paced runs and four 10-20-30 workouts. Here is a calendar of my training to date based on the data from my Garmin watch. I starred the date of the 5k race and each 10-20-30 workout:
As you can see, I’m right around 20 miles per week. The distance of a few of the 10-20-30 workouts vary in mileage, but that is just because I ran a bit longer on the warm up and cool down.
My key concerns at the two week milestone of the 30 Minute Runner Project are the following:
Continuing Knee Pain
My stupid left knee is still acting up a bit. I have to be incredibly cautious about this and be willing to miss a workout if the pain is too much.
The knee thing could mess everything up.
I still believe that the knee pain is resulting from weak quad muscles – with the increased workload of the 10-20-30 workouts, my knee tendons are getting overused. The goal is to continue isometric exercises for the inner quad muscle and hope for the best. Fingers crossed.
Days Off
Now that I’m in race training mode, it is actually tough for me to take days off from running. I’m only planning one day off per week, but even that is a struggle to accept.
With a race to look forward to in a few months, it is hard for me to accept running only about 20 miles per week. I am certainly influenced by my old college days of 90-100 mile weeks and feel like my training is inadequate.
It’s not like I have time to train more, but running has a way of forcing you to think illogically. One day off per week is critically important to allow my time to body to heal and adapt – especially when starting a new training program.
Running Solo
When doing the 10-20-30 workouts, I am reminded of how beneficial it is to have training partners to push you through workouts.
No matter how hard I try, it is difficult to really get up to 100% effort for the 10 second intervals. I think this is one of the reasons why I ran so much faster in high school and college – having teammates running with you during workouts is a powerful motivator and prevents you from slacking off.
I don’t think there is anything that I can do about this right now. The guys in the local running groups are focused on the traditional high mileage and longer speed workouts that I am avoiding.
Speed of 10-20-30 Workouts
As I’ve mentioned in prior posts, I am still not exactly comfortable with the pace of the 10-second intervals in the 10-20-30 workout. I realize that I’m supposed to run these interval at my VO2Max pace – which I think is around 6:08 per mile – but it is difficult to know if I am hitting that pace.
My Garmin watch gives me my average pace per mile, but due to the GPS technology, there is usually a delay in receiving my pace at a given moment. So I am usually half-way through a 10-second interval before I have any indication of how fast that I am going.
I’m sorry if I sound paranoid.
I’m just used to knowing exactly how fast I’m running in workouts. Back in college, I would run a 4 X mile workouts. If my goal time per mile was 4:40, and I came through the first 4o0 meters in 75-seconds (5:00 minute mile pace), I knew that I had to increase my pace.
The 10-second time period is incredibly short and I just don’t have enough time to make any adjustments to ensure that I am running my target VO2Max pace.
The only way to effectively analyze a 10-20-30 workout is to review the Garmin data afterwards. Here is what the pace of my 10-20-30 workout looked like last Saturday:
This chart is pretty cool because you can actually see the 15 different 10-second interval peaks. The good news is that each 10-second interval appears to be under 6:00 mile pace, so I should probably feel pretty good about how I’m running this workout.
So onward into the 3rd week of the 30 Minute Runner project! I hope this experiment is useful for you so far. I would certainly welcome any constructive criticism of the content so far. Leave a comment or send me an e-mail.
I want to be as helpful as I can and figure out if this type of training works for us busy runners.
You may be aware that the “10-20-30″ protocol calls for using that workout 3 times per week, and doing NO OTHER RUNNING apart from those workouts, ie- NOT doing 3 other “easy” runs per week, as you are doing. Also, my understanding of the “10 second” effort is that it is meant to be an all-out sprint, and thus, would be well above the “vo2 max” pace you are speaking about.
I would suggest to you that running on many days consecutively is the true cause of your knee pain. My experience as an adult runner is that even if the off days are run at an “easy” pace, running many days in a row tends to result in chronic injuries and problems, and that running “every other day” and doing cross training on the rest days (ie exercise bike), would likely result in an eventual cessation of your chronic running pains. Sometimes stubborness borne of a dogmatic attachment to traditional running ideas based on what work(ed) for elite/pro runners, is not necessarily helpful to amateur adult athletes – that is my conclusion based on over 3 years of testing out various running programs (with many injuries resulting from them). I currently am using the Furman FIRST program, and only running 3 days/wk myself, and it is nonetheless very challenging. I am also interested in this 10-20-30 approach, and may try it myself at some point.