3 x 1km - railway reserve

Last work out before Buller Half Marathon.

My coach told me to go and do 3 x 1km at 85%......my question was.............what pace is that??? what time should I be aiming for ???? I just didn't get it.....85% of what???

But with talking to him last night he said no pace, no time.......just effort.....so thinking about race pace and then just do 85% of that.....hmmmmm this is really tough. I know it sounds so simple and so logical but to me it was tough as I have never done that before.

I decided that since it was just 3km in total and my coach had said to me earlier that I dont always have to go to the track or find a long stretch of road....just a section of 500m is enough or at best 1km even. Well the railway reserve that is up behind me is exactly 2km from end to end....but it also has a height dif of 88m from end to end. So I decided I would start in the middle and do my 1st km going down the walk way, the second coming back up the walk way and the 3rd would be 50/50..I would go down for 500m and turn and come back up for 500m..............my way of evening it out. The bonus of using this area is that it is under shade the whole way!!!

I started out and tried hard to gauge if what I was doing was 85% of what I would normally do. I decided fairly quickly that, I was not breathing hard ...in fact I was not finding hard at all...so yep....still had more if I needed. But it was down hill................the trick will be the second km.....coming back up. I pressed stop on my watch at the end of my first km and mucked around for 3mins for my recovery......hmmm not a bad time at all...... then it was time to head back up. I could certainly feel the difference and so I did push a little harder but again still new I had more there if I needed it so I settled in to that pace and kept an eye on my breathing which was getting more labored but that was to be expected. Again my time was looking pretty good.......hmmmm something is certainly working right.

Now it was time for my last km.....I mucked around again for 3mins and then headed off down the track.....I was well and truely warmed up now and was just gliding down and I had to double check myself that I was not pushing too hard but no I still felt that I had more to give, I turned back at the 500m mark and caught the up hill .... yep that go the breathing going and yes I might have increased my effort to 90% for that last part.....but to press stop and see my time for the whole 3km and knowing that one of them was done the whole way back up the walk way......was AWESOME!!!!!!

3km - total time - 17:06

1st km - 5:37 (down hill)
2nd km - 5:49 (up hill)
3rd km - 5:37 (50/50)

3 x 1km - railway reserve