effects of downsizing....

2 hours down to 1.5.  You guessed
it, that's 25% less lactic acid!

I've cut my training time again. For the past month or so i've been working to sort out a schedule that is limited to 90 minutes a week - or rather 75 minutes one week and then 105 minutes the next.  I guess in some sense i'm seeking what could be described as - to get all math geek again - a minimum of the function of my body, given the parameters of my experiment (maintenance of great enough fitness to perform at a particular level, roughly "off by 50," and the ability to "do anything").  I'd like to stick to this volume for the remainder of 2012 and all of 2013, aiming to test it against a number of big and fun efforts along the way.

Anyway, i've noticed two things in particular thus far.

My workouts are mentally daunting, and i don't feel like i'm training at all anymore.

The first thought isn't really anything new - the workouts that i pushed the intensity on before were always ones that were often difficult to get excited about, especially before i began them.  It's hard to work so hard, and i think this is one reason (there may be many) so few people employ high intensity training exclusively.  In what now seems like the ancient past when i was doing three hours a week, i felt i had a lot more mental and physical leeway - sure, i didn't ever train below Zone 3 if i could help it, but these days Zone 3 seems akin to a stroll on the beach.  My workouts do still vary in intensity somewhat, but the three 10 minute efforts all involve shorter duration sprints above lactate threshold, or occasionally, in my 'easiest' workouts, a single longer time trial type interval that is spent at lactate threshold and then pushed above at the end.  My longer efforts - alternating between 30 minutes one week and 1 hour the next, are essentially race pace efforts.  Yesterday for example I ran 4.5 miles with a goal pace of under 6:40.  With my pretty significant lack of running lately i felt flat right off the bat.... sluggish, slow, and labored.  But i've learned that this doesn't necessarily mean i'm going slow, so i pushed through, 30 minutes felt like twice as long, and i managed to go just under my goal.  it was Brutal.  I better get used to it.

The second thought is both cool and kind of scary.  It's cool because although training and fitness is still a big part of my life (i write a blog about it after all) it's not a big PART of my life.  I now need just 30 minutes max on three days during the week, and that includes driving or biking time to and from a gym if i decide to go, changing time, rest time between my interval training and strength training - the whole enchilada.  I've found myself not even considering my training when i'm looking at my schedule each day - its like a quick little errand that can pretty much be fit in almost anywhere (as long as i don't do it too soon after eating!).  This is the cool part.  The scary part is that i've pretty much always 'felt' like i was training and i'm realizing that this had been built into my sense of identity to some regard.  And of course it's still there, it just needs to be adjusted - we tend not to identify ourselves by things we do roughly only 1% of the time we are awake.