Sunday Sep 27 — Lap Card
9 mi · 4 E + 3 @ HMP + 2 E · track version · 7 days out · A tier locked at 1:40:30
The track is a good call, with one condition
- It fixes the instrument problem. The recurring failure in this build is that the watch could not show you the pace you were actually running — Sep 13's single 8-mile work lap made "current-lap pace" a five-mile average, and a 7:25 quarter moved it by a second. On an oval the split at the line is exact and it arrives every lap. You cannot drift 12 sec/mi for four miles without seeing it.
- It is flat, so GAP = raw. Same constraint that governed Sep 13. No grade cost mixed into the HR read.
- The condition: GPS pace is not the instrument on a track. The pace field wanders on the curves and the block will measure long or short. If your watch has a Track Run profile, use it and set the lane — it snaps to the geometry and the distance becomes trustworthy. If it does not, run the ordinary profile but press lap at the start line every lap and read lap time. Lap time is the prescription; ignore pace/mi entirely.
- All 9 on the oval is fine — with one adjustment: run the easy miles in an outer lane, and reverse direction for them if the track is empty and local etiquette allows. Nine miles of counterclockwise lane 1 is a lot of one-sided curve loading, and the adductors are the known capacity gap in this program. The block itself stays lane 1, normal direction.
Turning 7:40 into a lap split
- Find the lap length before you start — signage, or ask. Outdoor is usually 400 m, older ones 440 yd, indoor often 200 m. Everything below is keyed to distance, not lap count, so any of them works.
- Lap split at 7:40 = lap length in metres × 0.286 sec. Window is that ±1%. Yards: multiply by 0.261 instead.
- On a short oval the window gets hard to read. At 200 m the whole 7:35–7:45 band is about a second and a half wide, which you cannot hold lap to lap — there, judge on two laps at a time, or on the cumulative clock below rather than the single split.
- If you get pushed out of lane 1 (yield to faster traffic, it is their track too), the lap gets longer: roughly +2 sec per lane per lap on a standard two-turn oval, half that indoors. Running lane 3 on a lane-1 split is 7:30/mi by accident.
- The block will not end on a whole lap. Fine. Stop the block at 3 miles, or at the first line past it — do not run extra laps to square the distance, and do not read a part-lap split as a pace.
The easy miles, if they're on the track too
- Easy is governed by HR, cap 148 — not by a lap split. Take whatever split that gives you and do not defend a number. There is no pace floor on an easy mile.
- Stop counting. Six easy miles on an oval is 20–30 trips past the same spot. Set the watch to auto-lap by distance and let it count; your job is the HR cap and getting to the block with fresh legs.
- Outer lane, and reverse direction if the track is empty and nobody minds. Yield the moment someone faster wants lane 1.
- The one real cost of the whole run on the track is boredom, and boredom 7 days out is cheap. The block is what this session is for.
Set up before you start
- Four cups on a chair or cooler lid at the start line, left to right: 1 Endurance · 2 water · 3 water · 4 Endurance. 4–6 oz each, lid on until you start. Take the leftmost remaining. Do not think about it mid-run.
- That order rehearses both race orderings — drink-alone into gel-with-water, and gel-with-water into drink-alone. On Oct 4 you take five cups in the sequence E · W+gel · E · W · W+gel.
- You pass the table on every lap and take from it four times all run. That is the part a track gets wrong by default. Sipping every lap rehearses a race that does not exist and tells you nothing about mile 10.
- Both gels in the race shorts pocket. Race shoes — the ones you will run Oct 4 in, not flats or spikes.
- 60 min before the first step: half bagel + 12–16 oz + 100 mg caffeine, all together. The Sep 13 protocol exactly; 150–200 mg was cancelled on Sep 24 and is not being tried 7 days out.
- Start at the race hour, as on Sep 13. Breakfast rehearsal, final one.
- Touchscreen disabled before you start, forecast irrelevant.
The run
| Where | Run mi | Block clock | Do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Easy | 0–4 | — | 4 E, HR cap 148. Outer lane, reverse direction if the track's empty. |
| Line | ~2 | — | CUP 1 — Endurance alone, on the move |
| Line | 4.0 | — | CUP 2 — water + GEL 1. Walking is allowed here only — this is the transition, not a station rep. Move to lane 1. |
| Block | 4.0 | 0:00 | Block starts. The first lap is the one that comes out at T pace. Read it at the line. |
| — | 5.0 | 7:40 | checkpoint — 7:35–7:45 |
| — | 5.5 | 11:30 | half. Under 11:22 and the next half mile is deliberately 7:50. |
| — | 6.0 | 15:20 | CUP 3 — water + GEL 2 at the next pass of the line, at 7:40, no stop, no slowing into the table. The pass that matters. |
| — | 6.25 | ~17:15 | read the split here — the restart burst lands in the quarter after the cup. Back to 7:40, not 7:25. |
| — | 7.0 | 23:00 | Block ends — 22:45–23:15. Stop it at 3 miles or the first line past it. |
| Easy | 7–9 | — | 2 E, back to the outer lane. CUP 4 — Endurance alone, 3–4 oz, in the first half mile. |
Block clock starts at the line, not at the cup table. Distances in that column are your watch's; on a track it will read slightly short, so trust the clock and the lap splits over the distance field. Never a gel and Endurance at the same cup — 6% solution on top of a gel is how a stitch starts.
The cup
- 4 oz, emptied, over 50–100 m — carry it and drink as you go rather than chugging at the table. One swallow per breathing gap.
- Zero standstills. Any stop and the race fluid plan gets rewritten, not the athlete blamed.
- The unrehearsed part is the sequencing and the 7:40, not the cup.
If a lap comes in fast — guardrail clean
Sep 13's card had no branch for this and four of eight miles landed outside the window with HR never near the guardrail. This is that branch.
- One lap under the window: run the next one deliberately at 7:50 pace. Do not bank the time.
- Two consecutive laps under the window: the block still runs to 3 miles, and the Oct 4 card's mile column gets rewritten as a hard cap on miles 1–6 rather than a target.
- Any lap at T pace (7:17) or faster: the block ends at 2.5 miles, not 3. Seven days out, a T-pace lap inside a taper session is a withdrawal, and the way to stop paying for it is to end the session early. That is a real cost and it is meant to be one.
- Anything slower than 7:55 with HR under 165: shorten your stride, don't lunge. Taper legs feel heavy and twitchy in the same week and neither is information.
HR
- Guardrail only — the session is programmed by lap time. Not both.
- Sustained >175 in the block → 7:47 for the rest of it. 178 at any point → abort to easy. Sep 13 topped at 167 over eight miles, so neither should come close to firing.
- Expected shape: HR 145 in the first block mile, finishing 155–160. Higher than that at correct splits, in 7 days' taper, is worth reporting.
Judged on
- Standstills: zero.
- Sequence: water-with-gel twice, Endurance alone once, in order, no collision.
- Every lap of the block inside the window, and 3 miles in 22:45–23:15. This is the execution test Sep 13 wasn't, on an instrument that can actually show you the number.
- Gut through the block on a gel at 7:40.
Bring back
- The lap length, and every block lap split — and whether they came from Track Run mode or the lap button.
- Which lane you actually ran, and any laps you were forced out of lane 1.
- Temp and dew point at the start. The watch records no temperature.
- Standstill count, and how much of each cup went down versus on you.
If the track is closed or crowded: run the Aug 30 flat 3.02 mi loop instead, cups at the loop start, watch built as ×3 one-mile repeats pace-programmed 7:35–7:45 with current-lap pace on screen. Same three jobs, same branches, read miles instead of laps. The one thing not to do is take the block to a rolling route — hills 7 days out buy nothing and cost the clean read.
Next race-pace touch: Wk 18 Wed, 2 @ HMP with one more cup on the move. Then Oct 4.