Speed work

Hey,

The last two days running have been better. The day before yesterday I did a hilly 10.4 k(yes I wore my Garmin) in ummmm what was it again 48:20? Not too bad considering the two big hills on the route, I still didn't go too hard. Kinda like a hard but still comfortable, not suffering. I want to try and build up the speed for the Last chance half as I said earlier. I'll do it if things go well and I'm able to get some speed in my legs. I think the base should still be there despite the long break/time off so I'll go right into some speed work. The only way to get faster is to run faster eh, go figure. So I'm gonna try to run hard on the tues/thurs of each week. Shorter faster interval type stuff on tues, then a bit of a tempo run on thurs. That's what I'm used to doing for marathons, it's worked for me.

I'm tempted to go to the track, it's easier to keep track of times/distances/paces, plus you got a even flat surface to cruise on. Makes going faster easier to do since you're wanting to focus on the speed, not the strength(ie hills). But it's a bit of a hike to the track and for my first week I have no idea how things are going to go, so I stuck to my 1k loop around the park here at home for yesterday's first set of intervals. I planned on doing 5x1km and figured a 1.5 min rest would be ok. I did my warm up running to the park and one loop around measuring it with the Garmin so I know how close it is to 1 km. It turns out that it was just a shade over, it also has a downhill then ends up climbing out of the park. Ohhh boy that's going to hurt on #4 and #5 climbing out. So after the warmup I started the first one, hmmm not too bad 3:51 I believe, not super speedy, but I guess good considering the no track 1km. Getting to #3 I was wayyy out of breath and thought I'd need to slow it down for the 4th. I started the 4th slower, but it almost immediately got right back into the regular pace. It's amazing how the body even in distress memorizes the pace. Anyways that interval ended up only being 3 seconds slower then the one before, course I was hunched over at that point. That hill really is a killer, it literally ends off the interval. Not sure which is worse though, would I prefer it early on, where I'd end up suffering the rest of the km or at the end where I can kinda tell myself "k the finish is just up the hill, then I can stop". The last one was a second or two faster. They went somthing like this 3:51,3:48,3:47,3:53,3:50, so I was able to pick up the last one again to about the average. I calculate the 3:47 to be about 6:04 per mile pace, I need about 6:50 average pace for the half to go under 90 min. Doable? hmmmm we'll see, I have a month of training time. Today will def. be a easy day, or maybe even a day off, then thurs I'll maybe go to the track to test out a 8km timed run. I'll aim for 32:30-34, hopefully closer to 32.5 which is 6:30 pace. Enough number crunching for you Keith?