Week 7, 4km run report.
So I thought I'd try some different music this time. As well as loving running in time to classic hit songs, I'm also an avid classical music fan, so I thought I'd give some Mozart a go for running. I chose the first and last movements of the last three symphonies, 39,40 and 41 (because they're fast and lively).
Also I thought it would make a pretentiously eye-catching title for a post!
It wasn't entirely true fartlek. For the first two interval sessions I used the 10-20-30 interval method, with the iPhone jog-run-sprint app. You can customise it to set up your workout with warm up, cool down and any number (I chose two) of sets of interval training where you repeat the cycle 30 seconds jog, 20 seconds run and 10 seconds sprint five times, followed by a "pause" of 2 minutes (or whatever) when you walk slowly to let the heart rate recover.
After that, and a bit of a recovery walk, I finished the run with freer "fartlek" type intervals, alternating slow and fast. Here I found the Mozart (first movement of Jupiter symphony) worked really well - you could go fast for the lively bits, and slow down for the quieter sections. Classical is more difficult to run in time to because the tempo often changes, but I clicked into tempo for the final thumping bars of the Jupiter symphony right at the end (about 4.3 km including warm up walk) - it was a great feeling - crash bang wallop, end of run!!
You can see from the picture that this type of training produces interesting graphs - the two sets of five intervals can be seen as spikes, and the fartlek towards the end less regular spikes. Also the cadence is in various colours. In the lower graph you see the pace again, and the rollercoaster heart rate (max 166) in red.
Would you believe I analyse vital sign graphs (including heart rate) in my job, for hospital patients? I think if someone lying in a hospital bed produced a graph like this I'd get seriously worried! Definitely a case of tachycardia!
Anyway - a new training technique has been invented. I call it "Mozartlekking". Would Amadeus be turning in his grave? Knowing something of one of Mozart's alleged anti-social habits, I think he may have preferred the original term: "fartlek" ..