Category: Magic carpet

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!

After a few weeks when work (or apathy) intervened, the lunchtime intervals made a welcome reappearance today.

Low recent mileage meant that I took it pretty easy, flipping between 6mph and 9mph once I was half warmed up, but towards the end I increased the faster intervals to 10mph until my heart rate increased to over 180bpm, then backed off to 9mph.

Overall I covered 3.53 miles in the 30 minute slot… just over 7mph average and I am reassured that I’m still fit, as I recovered really quickly afterwards.

If I am to keep on running on this little oblong of synthetic black stuff, I realise that I’m going to have to report something more interesting than ‘ran again’ to hold your attention.  I will have a think about this.

Today I was interested to see that my heart rate seemed to be a little lower than before, so I focussed around this.  My intervals were 6mph for 400m and then 8mph and 9mph for 200m each… for most of the half hour session.  Towards the end I raised the bar a little, but kept the recovery stage the same.

To start with I was getting my heart rate back under 140 from a 170 high, but towards the end it had raised at both ends to 150/180.

What was interesting was that, although still dripping with sweat, I felt really composed, like I had hardly stretched myself… although in 30 minutes I covered 3.5 miles, so 7mph… faster than this time last week when I could hardly stand afterwards.  This suggests that the intervals are WELL worth doing!

Of course it’s been easy the last couple of weeks as I’ve been developing a workshop, so the workload has been flexible… it’ll be interesting to see whether I’ll be able to keep the training up in the same way when normal service resumes.

Hang on a minute… what’s all this normal service lark?  I’ve not done anything that most people would consider normal, work-wise, for several years now!

The proximity of the running machine makes it pretty tempting to use, even on days when I could easily run outside.  But it is unlikely that I would venture out for only half an hour and if I did I would have to run around the local roads.

Today I paused in the work I was doing, ran, eat lunch, showered and was back at my desk pretty much in an hour… well okay, just over an hour then.  But I did start working at about 6.30am this morning!

So my aim was to replicate the intervals of Wednesday, but increase the speed a little.  In 30 minutes I managed 3.6 miles… 7.2mph.

According to Kim, these short interval sessions, mixed in with my normal runs, are a sure-fire way to build up the speed necessary to run a three and a half hour time in Brighton… and in my dreams, beat Cliff and Pete.

Of course, what might also help me in this latter regard is the fact that, thanks to the goading of the BIG man, they have entered a 50 mile race a couple of weeks before!

Either way, watch here for more interval training!