Nothing Like a bit of Speed

The results of the 4 miler on Sunday were posted today. My actual time was 26:45 (64th Place). The girl I pipped at the post (4th lady) was not the girl I passed in the 15 mile Cork to Cobh race – she actually came in at 25:34 – first lady home. Yesterday mornings run was an easy recovery run of 6.7 miles following sunday's race. The moon was full and the stars were out on a very mild morning - perfect running weather. 6.7 Miles in 58:03 (08:40 pace @ 125 HR - slowest run in a while) This evening I felt like running intervals as I felt I could have done with some speedwork for Sundays Race and I want to improve my speedwork for other local races coming up over the next month and a half. I also want to run the "Goal Mile" on Christmas Morning and get under 6:00 minutes (I did 06:15 last year). I went to the Eagle AC track session for the first time in a month or two with the intention of doing 800m repeats. I warmed up over a 2 mile loop from the CIT track and when I returned I fell in with a group doing 6 x 1 lap intervals inlane 3 (lane 1/2 closed). Their target pace was 84 seconds per lap (417m - 05:24 pace). During the first lap I felt reasonably comfortable at the pace so I moved out to lane 4 ( one guy was using lane 5 or 6). The recovery between laps was a full lap at a slow jog/walk (3 minutes approx) which got my heart rate down to 120 or below before the next fast lap. The 6 laps went as follows:- 1:23 @ 154 HR 1:24 @ 160 HR 1:23 @ 159 HR 1:23 @ 162 HR 1:24 @ 161 HR 1:22 @ 166 HR (gave a little more effort with guy in Lane 5 - thought I'd be a little faster) While the effort was hard I was reasonably comfortable always with a little left in the tank to maintain speed and form over the last 50m. I cooled down over 2.1 miles to give a total of 6.95 miles for the session (speed varied from about 05:20 to 15:00 minutes/mile). If I could maintain 05:40 pace over 4 laps on Christmas morning I would be very happy (It all depends on when Santa Clause comes and more importantly when his presence is discovered!!! - or should that be presents.