Monday, August 9, 2010

VO2max Booster Completed

it's now two days after finishing the VO2max Booster Program and i'm actually finding the thought of just going out for an easy run hard to fathom. especially considering the rain that is falling outside.

while i haven't run a test to check out if i gained fitness (improved VO2) i'm definitely feeling fitter as a result of the intensive 14 day training block. from start to finish the workouts actually started feeling easier and on the last day i even needed to up the pace during the final 30-30s session to try and max out rather than quit because of boredom.

ok i'll give a brief overview of my day to day while on the program.

day 1: skipped the 5min VO2max test scheduled and used my VO2max speed (3:20 pace) taken from my physiological test results conducted at the NSW Institute of Sport. next time (yes thinking about repeating this program in two weeks) i'll run the test to get a picture of my current physical status.

during the week (monday to friday) i also included a 8-15km easy run maintaining a HR effort below 75%max.

day 2 (wednesday) - before commencing this program i had already ran the previous three days with moderate-high intervals.

20min warmup, 10 x (30+30sec), 30min easy

Got through the warmup feeling good and when it came time to run the intervals for mathematical ease i extended the interval from 30sec to 200m so that i didn't have to constantly look at my watch. ran all intervals around 40sec and the recovery was extended to 100m but run slightly quicker than prescribed. legs felt fast, bouncy and surprisingly fresh.

day 3: legs felt awesome and less fatigued than is usual while training with high volume.

10min warmup, 3 x (5+10min), 5min easy

i increased the warmup to 20min and then ran the session as 5min @ 3:42 pace with 10min @ 6:40 pace (which felt too slow but i kept to the program), 10min cooldown. felt comfortable throughout the session.

day 4: recovery great

20min warmup, 3 sets of 6 x (40+20sec) 4min easy, 14min easy

another session which felt easy. maybe next round i'll increase the repeats up to 10.

day 5: felt fresh after yesterday's short repeats

10min easy, 20 x (15+15sec), 10min easy

today was a scheduled recovery day with short sprints. i actually liked this session and will continue to use this a short recovery day. it really helped to flush the legs. i also ran the 15sec fast segments closer to 110% of vVO2.

day 6: felt rested after yesterday's short session

20min warmup, 4 sets of 5 x (30+30sec) 5min easy, cooldown

when it came time to do this session didn't have it written down and ended up running five sets rather than four. still found that i could do more sets especially with such a long (5min) easy jog between sets.

day 7: happy with the thought that i'm almost halfway through this challenge

10min warmup, max x (30+30sec), 15min easy

went into this session with my stomach a little off but thought 20 would be a good number to hit. ended up stopping at 24 repeats due to stomach and not my legs or lungs which was a good result. it is suggested that it is better to stop a session knowing you could do more rather than going to complete failure. of course not going to the brink leaves you with the question of where your failure point is. need to push through sometimes in order to find your limits.

well that's a short seven day summary of the program. i'll try and post the next seven days of the program when i have some more time.

Day 2: Early start

After discovering that my wife's bike had been stolen from the bus stop where I had chained it up for my ride home last night meant that...