Category: Short run

I didn’t really want to run this morning (there’s clearly a theme here!) but I knew that I had to, so I jumped on the machine and set off to be a bit quicker than my Friday run last week.  This involved warming up for a nanosecond before dialling in a speed of 7.7mph and hanging on!

I counted down the 20 circuits in order to pass the time, even though they seemed in no particular hurry today… the only usual benefit of running faster is that the run is over sooner, but today I could have been running at the speed of light and the circuits would still have taken their time.

So, 5 miles in 39 minutes, 16 seconds… a whole 21 second gain on last week for a WHOLE lot more effort!

Still, the speaker at the lunch event I attended was Tim Hutchings, who is the man behind the Brighton Marathon, so at least I was able to bask privately in the knowledge that I’m keeping up my training schedule!

This morning I ran the intervals that I didn’t run yesterday, legs still a touch stiff from Sunday, but in a nice way.

I started at 7mph and increased this by 0.5mph for each 400m lap until I got to 10.5mph.  By this time my legs and particularly my ankles were causing me discomfort.  Also, I wasn’t sure whether it was a good or bad sign that my heart rate peaked at 175 and went no higher.

I dropped back to 7mph for a breather and built up again to 9.5mph.  Finally I alternated between 7 and 9.5/9/8.5 until I reached the end.

What is really frustrating is that I had hoped to come in close to last week’s personal best of 38.43… but now I’ve gone and beaten that by over a minute, passing 5km at 24.04 and reaching the 5 mile mark at 37.35… an average of a tad over 8mph.

I hate jumping over ever-higher bars… you know that there will come a point when you just won’t make it!

I had quite a thoughtful run on the machine this morning (Friday), the subject of which I will come back to some other time… right now my ears are ringing from going to a brilliant Soul Katz gig!

But while I remember, I was focussing today on keeping my heart-rate down slow, by trying to run and breathe as efficiently as possible.  It was mostly sub 160 until after the two mile mark, then sub 165 until three miles and apart from a couple of blips, I managed to keep it sub 170 until the end.  Not bad considering I ramped the speed up from 7mph to 7.6mph in the first 400m and kept it right there for the rest of the five miles.

So five miles in 39 minutes, 37 seconds.

I was just in the process of making a quick round of cheese on toast to eat at my desk when I realised that I was supposed to be running today.  I only had a 40 minutes window of opportunity if I wanted to have time to shower before I needed to be out the door, so the completed cheese on toast went in the fridge and I went on the running machine.

I didn’t even have time to put Kiss FM on to accompany me so I had to put up with the sound of my feet as I did some fast intervals… hardly intervals though, as I was only going from 7mph to 8mph to 9mph to 8mph and then back round again.

As I reached the 5-mile mark I was surprised to see the time… 38 minutes, 43 seconds.  One second faster than Friday last week.  I really do hate racing myself, as I DO like to win… which means that the task can only get harder from here on in!

BTW, the cold cheese on toast was hard to swallow while I was running around the house trying to shower & out earlier, but I’ve just eaten the other half of it now and it was quite tasty.

Bravado got the better of me yesterday and I foolishly volunteered to try to run 5km in sub-20.30.

As I started running on the machine at lunchtime, I finally worked out the speed I would need to do to achieve this: 9.4mph for 3.125 miles.  Eeeek!

I thought I had better warm up thoroughly, so completed one mile before increasing the speed.  After one more mile I can’t say that I felt particularly like doing 2.125 more at that speed, so I backed off.

So, Andy, the answer is no.   Unfortunately I forgot to check what the time was when I did complete the 5km, so I’ll have to try again next week.

However, as I reached 5 miles, I noticed that the time was 38.44, which is actually faster than earlier in the week.  This 7.74mph average speed would give me a 5km split time of just over 24 minutes.  This is faster than I thought, bearing in mind it included my first warm-up mile.

At the back end of Friday and before Kim got back from work, I managed to sneak in a quick run.

It was my intention to run three miles.  This started out badly, as the two Hot Cross Buns I had wolfed down mid afternoon refused to budge and I hence ran the first mile with the stitch… and gasping for breath.  I stopped for a moment for a sip of water and to turn the fan on and I felt much better from then on.

Inevitably, when I reached three miles, I decided to carry on to 30 minutes… and then on to 4 miles… and then, by the time I had slowed down to recover for 400m, I thought I may as well run on to 40 minutes so I increased the speed again… and then I was almost at 5 miles so I thought I may as well carry on to there!

I reached 5 miles at 41.55 which is an average of 7.14mph and even with a cool-down lap, the final 5.25 miles averaged 7.08mph.

I was told, in no uncertain terms, that I was to run five miles today.  In tervals.

I tried to get out of it by clearing the snow from the drive into a small pile…

… but I really didn’t think this was going to carry any weight as an argument, so I set to at lunch-time to perform the required intervals.

It was always going to be tougher than normal: firstly because I was knackered from shovelling snow; and secondly because I only normally do about 3 miles when I’m doing intervals!

I started at 6mph and alternated between this and 7.5mph, plus half a mph for each time around, until I got to 10mph at the 3-mile mark.

I then ran at 8mph until my heart-rate rose to 176 and dropped back to 6mph until my heart-rate fell to 164.  And repeated until I reached the required distance.

The result, 5 miles in a very sweaty 42 minutes… an average of 7.14mph.  There are easier ways to get to this mean speed, but apparently intervals is what will give me more speed overall, so it’s well worth the effort!

Since the sun, at its very brightest this morning, failed even to melt the ice on the car outside, I didn’t even make an effort to venture out to test the temperature.  Cold enough methinks.

And yet as a Sunday, I had to run, so I climbed aboard the magic carpet and it took me…. well, absolutely nowhere actually.  Despite a lot of effort on my part.

A set of intervals were long overdue, so after a brief warm-up, I did five sets consisting of 200m at 6mph, 200m at 7mph and 400m at 8.5mph, this latter rising by 0.5mph each set.  Thus I ended up at around the 3 mile mark running 400m at 10.5mph with a brief rise to 11mph to push my heart rate slightly higher.

After a short recovery, I finished off the session with half a mile at 7mph giving a grand total of 4 miles covered in 34.14… an overall average of pretty much 7mph on the nose.  This is the speed I will need to able to run at for 26.2 miles in April if I am to hit my 3 hours 45 minutes target time.

Yikes!