Walking the walk

While this week sees a cut in running volume, running quality has taken a front seat with an emphasis on race pace - I have to get used to the feel of 7 minute miles. All runs have been in the evening, which is unusual for me. I'm not complaining as it gave me extra rest in the morning.

Tuesday at the track was the first session of the week where I teamed up with John D for what I though would be 1k sets. John suggested we ease up on the speed with 95 second laps (90 seconds in previous weeks) but somehow we ended up doing 2k repeats, 3 in all (the most track speedwork I have done this build). The extra 5 seconds per lap made all the difference and the repeats felt smooth, coming in 5 or 6 seconds under the 7:55 target. Wednesdays run was relatively short at 5 miles so I had decided to test out my marathon pace after the mile warmup - initially intending to run 3 x 7 minute miles but I kept the effort up over the last mile coming in at 28:07 for the 4 miles (07:01 pace) with my HR maxing at 150. Todays run was a 10 miler again with the bulk of it at MP. I figured that this would be my last hard session with plenty of time to recover as I'm still 10 days out from Dublin. I had initiallly planned for 8 MP miles, cut it back to 5 or 6 early in the run and ultimately extended it out to 9 miles as I wanted to see how my HR would vary. Once I got into the 7 minute groove my pace felt comfortable and steady for the bulk of the run with very little deviation except for the few undulations where I kept the effort reasonably even and the pluses and minuses balanced each other out. I didn't want to push the inclines too much just to maintain pace as the price would be too much in a marathon - I knew the average pace would drop again as the rise gave way to a fall. There were a couple of spots where my pace drifted off and I had to concentrate on gradually upping it to get back on track. I covered the 9 miles in 63:02 (07:00 pace) with splits varying with the undulations from 6:53 to 7:07. My avg HR for each mile rose from 136 (low following stretching after warmup mile) to 156, with a max of 161 - similar to the first 9 miles of Cork to Cobh. I would hope to keep my average HR for each mile below 160 for the first half of Dublin which should leave me enough in the tank for the more demanding second half. Tue 13th Oct 2.5 miles in 19:49 (07:56 pace - Treadmill) 8 miles @ about 7:56 pace with 3 x 2k in 07:48/50 (06:17/18 pace) Wed 14th Oct 5.28 miles in 37:37 (7:07 @ 139 HR) with 4 miles in 28:07 (07:01 pace) Fri 16th Oct 10.25 miles in 01:12:31 (07:04 pace @ 147 HR) with 9 miles in 63:02 (07:00 pace)