Stepping Up a Gear

One of the reasons I didn't run the Mallow 10 miler last Sunday was that I didn't want to interrupt my track training too much particularly as we were upping the interval from 6:20 to 6:00 miles this evening. The other reason was the 23 mile long run on Saturday - no point in running Mallow if I was not racing it. I could always run 10 miles from home - and that's what I did. So with an unintentional day off yesterday (too many pints of the black stuff on Sunday evening) my legs should have been fairly fresh this evening for the challenge, although I had soffened them up a bit with 5 miles on the trteadmill at lunchtime. Coach's instructions were 3 x 6:12 miles (93 second laps) but we decided that 90 was an easier figure to remember. There was 4 of us in all (Kevin, Paul, John and myself) I had left the garmin at home (still ran with the HR strap Doh!) and was relying on Kevin to get me through.

Mile 1 in 6:02 - ok but had to pick it up during the last 800 to get on target. Mile 2 in 5:52 - I had led out and overcompensated particularly chasing down the other pacing groups during lap 3. Still felt good though. Mile 3 in 5:50 - Paul led out with no watch and I kept on his heels. Coach said that we should have stuck to the target 6:00 pace and that if we were feeling energetic we should add miles as opposed to increase pace, which made sense. So John, Paul and I headed out for a 4th mile and kept pretty much to target - Mile 4 in 5:58. That makes 4 miles in 23:42. I thnik we'll go for the sub 30 five miles next week. It's not entirely new territory as I had done 5 x 6 minute mile repeats in December but the recoveries were a minute longer at 3 minutes. Tue 9th Feb 5.0 miles in 39:40 (07:56 pace - Treadmill) 8.0 miles approx with 4 x 1 mile in 6:02/5:52/50/58.