I love the simplicity of this set.In theory it should be straight forwards, go at 10 km race pace, which for me is bang on or hopefully a shade under the all important 4 min per km mark to get me around 10km in under 40 minutes. One day, one day.
It was another ice wind day. La bise had stopped blowing at 160km per hour ripping various bits of buildings in Rolle, most notably part of the petrol station. That made the news! However, she was still blowing firmly in from the lake towards Geneva and it was bitterly cold.
Tenke said she'd run at my pace. Hmmm. What that translated to was, I'll run at your pace until there is any hint of you fading then I'll drift in front just enough to drag you through the rep at the target pace. Which, into that wind is a particularly kind thing to do.
We started at the naked lady, which Tenke claimed was not naked. I'll let you make your own mind up on that one.
The ice wind bit hard and I struggled to find my rhythm. The Garmin went into over drive screaming at me to speed up. I decided to ignore it. Tenke demanded to know why the Garmin did not know we were running into the wind.
The rep finished and Tenke circles like a vulture while I'm bent over double gulping frozen air in and trying to get some blood back into my head. We jog through the recovery.
Rep two feels better and I ignore the Garmin and am delighted to hear the final beep as the rep ends. I assume the post rep bent over double position and suddenly Tenke is not circling anymore but standing over me with her hands on her hips and a stern look on her face. She barks "NO STOPPING!" at me in a thick Dutch accent which is quite scary. It has the desired effect though, as I jog through the rest of the recovery and dare not ever stop again during reps!
By now I realise that the 3rd and final outbound rep will take us further than I've ever been. I enquire about the route beyond the crane. Yeah it's fine, just run up the hill - that's how I run home....
So, the last half of rep three is both into the ice wind and uphill. Only the thought of coming back down keeps me going to the end of the four minutes. Tenke is disappointed that we don't make it to the top of the hill during the recovery - yes she made us run UP the hill on the recovery!
Rep 4 was a joy. Downhill and the ice wind behind. 5 and 6 were solid too and we nearly made it all the way back to the naked lady by the end of the set.
Easy warm down and some rough calculations cheer me as I am sure that was around 4 min kms on all the reps.
Did not get a chance to look at the stats until now and am pleasantly surprised. Shade slower than 4min kms on the outbound 3 into the wind, but just a shade faster than 4min kms on the way back so net-net all six were at an ave of 03:56pace. Now all I need to do for sub 40 10km is add 4 more reps and remove the 2min recoveries!
Heart rate was also spot on. Hit max on last rep and spent 14mins in zone 5 which is the most I've spent in the intensive zone for a long time.
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