Shakeout: Into the Unknown
Testing limits, expanding horizons, and skillet veggies
The minute I saw the workout plan for Sunday, I knew it was gonna be rough. Avery wanted me to run 3 x 1.25 miles at 6:25 pace, every one of those numbers being a bit more aggressive than what I have in my mind regarding the upper limits of my abilities. Not crazy aggressive, mind you, just a subtle turn of the dial from “Wow, this is going to be really hard” to: “I don’t know if I can do that.”
It’s in that space between knowing something will be difficult and not knowing if you can do it where training growth has a chance to flourish. Not only are you challenging yourself on a physical level when you enter the unknown, you are also testing your own belief system by asking the question internally: Can you do it? There’s only one way to find out.
Workouts like this are crazy hard, especially on hot summer mornings with swamp-like humidity choking the air. So, when it became apparent that 1.25 mile repeats really were a bit too far to sustain that level of effort, and 6:25 pace actually was a touch too aggressive, I recalibrated my expectations mid-run.
Instead of 1.25 miles, I did single-mile repeats. Rather than 6:25 pace, I figured I’d just run hard and let the numbers figure themselves out later. The result was a monster effort with 3 solid miles of lactate threshold work to throw into the (an)aerobic stew along with an extra fitness boost thanks to the humidity.
On paper, the workout was something of a disappointment. Avery doesn’t enter those distance and pace variables for no reason. They are finely calibrated, and uncannily on point. Yet, the world exists off paper. It churns on regardless of hopes, dreams, or pace goals. What you do when life doesn’t go according to plan is every bit as important as what happens when everything lines up in your favor.
Whether you run 6:25 or 6:45 really doesn’t matter when the bigger question is whether you made an honest effort to try your best. That feeling of knowing – of gaining knowledge by confronting the unknown – is priceless.
In the rest of this week’s Shakeout, we dive into a stacked training week, plus a protein-packed recovery meal you can make in 30 minutes or less with a little prep. If you like what you’ve been reading, why not throw a few bucks into the machine to keep this operation operational.
Let’s Shake: