Need For Speed

I think it's time in my training cycle for a bit more structured speedwork. I have a marathon in just over 6 weeks and the only speedwork, apart from the odd race or 2, has been long tempo type runs a la HADD.

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I know I started my speedwork too early for the Cork Marathon in June and peaked about a month early. After a two week recovery from the Barcelona Marathon in March I started straight into the "race sharpening" cycle I had left before tapering for Barcelona with a bit more mileage thrown in for good measure. I think I'll put the question of peaking at the right time to "Mystery Coach" for discussion next Monday.

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I am finding it hard to get up and out the door before 0630 hrs these mornings and since I have to get back by 0730 hrs to assist or in the chaos that is multiple school runs I am only getting relatively short runs in. On Wednesday to Friday Abina is out the door at 0730 hrs to work leaving me to co-ordinate the whole affair. It's not that bad it's just that my running time is getting squeezed.

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On Wednesday I completed another recovery type 5.25 Miles run to the Park - legs still tired and achy.

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Thursday saw me doing a double run of 6.7 steady miles in the morning and a further tempo style run of 5.4 miles from the office at lunch time. I set off on this run with the intention of doing a 20 minute tempo run at about 06:40 to 06:50 pace in the middle (10k pace). After warming up at a reasonably brisk pace I headed into my tempo run, however the effort felt too hard to maintain for 20 minutes under the heat of the midday sun (22 degrees - all relative I know) so I bailed after about 7.5 minutes and eased the pace for the remainder of the run. On completion I found that the average pace for the run was 07:20 with the faster mile (actually 1.2 miles) at 06:15 - no wonder I bailed.

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This mornings run of 6.7 miles (repeat of Thursdays loop) was towards the recovery end of the spectrum given my harder than anticipated effort yesterday. This gave a total of 24 miles over the last 3 days. Tomorrow morning sees the return on my long run - 20 miles or so. I haven't completed one of these since Wednesday 29th August (I hope I remember how it's done).

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• Wed - 5.25 Miles in 44:57 (08:32 pace @ 130 HR)
• Thu - 6.7 Miles in 52:09 (07:47 pace @ 139 HR) & 5.4 Miles in 39:35 (07:20 pace @ 153 HR with 1.2 Miles @ 06:15 pace & 162 HR
• Fri - 6.7 Miles in 58:34 (08:27 pace @ 128 HR)