Two things happened over the last week that felt connected, even though on the surface they’re pretty different. I raced for the first time in years. And a few days later, I cut a workout short in the middle of one of the best sessions I’ve run all summer.
The Sunset Run
I ran the PISE Sunset Run x Dream Mile — a low-key, community 3K on the Peninsula Co-op track at PISE here in Victoria. It’s not really built as a competitive race. It’s music, a festival atmosphere, kids and families out on the track together, all supporting PISE’s youth programs. I’ve run plenty of races over the years, but almost all of them trail races — this was the first time in quite a while lining up for something fast, on a track, at that kind of pace. It was also the first real test of six weeks following Marius Bakken’s Norwegian method — almost entirely sub-threshold work, no race-pace training, just controlled volume held flat at 75 to 85 minutes a week.
I went out too fast, around 82 seconds a lap, took the lead at 400m, and then spent a good chunk of the race dodging kids and families rather than racing anyone specific. I eased off tactically through the middle, made sure I had enough for the last two laps, and won. My time worked out to somewhere around 10:16 to 10:20 for the full 3000m — not quite the sub-10 I’d called for beforehand, and clearly not a clean fitness test given the traffic and the tactical racing. But it was a real result, in a real race, off six weeks of training that never once touched actual race pace.
Cutting the workout
A few days later, legs still carrying some cost from the race, I went out for 8x800m and stopped at 6. The paces were excellent — some of the most consistent splits I’ve run all summer. Heart rate was controlled the whole way. On paper it was working.
But something else was off. Low motivation going in. Trouble focusing between reps. And both sides — soleus, tendon — felt like they were working harder than the numbers said they should be. Right at the end of the sixth rep, I decided to stop, before I could talk myself out of it.
That was hard – walking away from a workout that’s going well, with nothing forcing your hand, no bad splits, no blown heart rate cap, is a different kind of decision than stopping because you’re falling apart. There’s no external permission slip. You just have to trust what your body is telling you over what the data is telling you.
In hindsight, I probably should have planned for six reps from the start. Three days post-race, first fast race back in years after focusing on trails, I didn’t have any prior data on what racing at that speed costs my body right now. I do now.
The through-line
Both of these things are really about the same skill: making decisions based on what the body actually needs rather than what looks good on paper, or what I think I should be able to do. Racing tactically instead of chasing a clean time. Stopping a good workout instead of finishing it just to say I did. Neither felt satisfying in the moment. Both were, I think, the right calls. Way to go me…
That’s where six weeks of this training approach has actually gotten me. Not just fitter. Better at listening.
I’m using Claude as a daily training and rehab log — tracking morning stiffness, pain levels, sessions, and patterns in real time. These blog posts are written with Claude’s help, pulling from that ongoing log each week.
