Ran the Provo River 5 Mile Tempo with Jeff McLellan this morning. The plan was to go out at 5:45 pace and keep picking up if feeling good. Felt no problems at first - 2:52 half, then 2:49 (5:41), 2:49, 2:48 (5:37,11:18),2:49 (14:07 at the turnaround), then started gradually picking it up after recovering from a 180, recovery quarter in 1:25, then 1:23, the next one in 1:24 and it felt a bit hard. The next one was still 1:24, and it felt harder. And then comes the familiar symptom of neural fatigue, good old friend, or rather bad old foe - next quarter in 1:29. I could not believe it, I thought I did my math wrong. Thought it was a fluke, tried to push harder, next quarter in 1:27. Jeff took off with a mile to go. I ran the uphill quarter in 1:27 putting in mentally about a good 1:22 effort although not breathing very hard, and then 1:28, and 1:27. Recovered a bit by the last one, was able to pick it up a bit, and it did not feel so bad - 1:24, total time 28:25, last mile in 5:46. Jeff ran the last mile in 5:33 finishing in 28:12. I expected a measure of neural fatigue from WBR, but not that much. It is a weird feeling - legs are not sore, breathing is fine, HR is normal for the pace, overall you are feeling fine, except you just cannot go any faster. The only way you know that something is wrong is from your splits, your heart rate being too low for the mental effort, and seeing your training partner move away as if you were standing still. In the past, I treated neural fatigue by cutting mileage. This time I'll try something different - just train normally, and try to find a way to control it without cutting the mileage. Today I tried Powerade, honey on bread and whole wheat animal crackers, and a nap.
Ran to Computune to pick up Zhu in the morning (1.7), then a bit later ran with Julia (0.5), and also ran with the kids in the evening and added some more (5.8). Felt good in the evening.
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