Category: Short run

Posted on

Keeping the pressure on

In the context of training for a marathon, I have wondered more than once whether running three miles on a Monday really gives me any tangible benefit.

As if to answer my question by analogy and knowing that I have no fee-paying projects right at this moment, one of my colleagues called me this morning to pique my mental faculty with some interesting thoughts and ideas.  These ideas might not pay the bills, but they keep my brain muscle exercised in the way that my little Monday runs do for my legs.

So even though my legs took me 15 miles yesterday, I had a quick 3-mile run on the machine this morning.  25 minutes 47 seconds.

Now to do the same for my head.

Posted on

Five on Friday

Strange to tell, but my legs are changing shape… I noticed this morning.  No, they’re not pear-shaped, although they may well be after the marathon, but there are definitely muscles developing that I’ve not seen before… at least on my legs!

So I kept up the pressure earlier with another lunchtime run on the magic carpet.  One and a quarter miles at 7.9mph, two and a half at 8mph and the final one and a quarter at 8.1mph gave me 5 miles in 37minutes 43 seconds and an average of 7.95mph.

This is 8 seconds off my PB on 3rd Feb, although that was an interval session and I was not even outside my comfort zone today.  I’m guessing that those new muscles could be quite useful to my running.

Posted on

Post run run

After yesterday’s run I expected to be quite a bit stiffer today than I was… the programme must be working.

Still, it wasn’t that pleasant running on the machine as my hip is still a little painful.  At least I know how to alleviate the pain now though and hopefully, with a little persistence, I can resolve the problem.

So three miles at 7mph, with a little break after a mile to stretch. 25 minutes 57 seconds.

Posted on

Life without broadband

The broadband went off last night and has only come back since about 4.30pm today.  It surprises me how lost I instantly felt without it, being suddenly without access to research tools, internet banking (admittedly, only paying bills), this site etc.

I have actually had quite a good day though, getting some off-line chores done as well as reading a little more of John Mullins & Randy Komisar’s excellent book Getting to Plan B… which, as far as I’ve read so far, is highly recommended!

I also managed to squeeze in my lunchtime run and in sharp contrast to last week, I was really looking forward to it.

My current general plan with my Friday short runs is to slowly push the speed envelope, so where I ran at 7.7mph last week, today I dialled in 7.8… not a whole lot, admittedly, but worth two and a half minutes across a marathon distance.

It was quite a comfortable pace and with my heart rate still sub-160 at the half-way mark, I increased the speed to 8mph for a negative split.  This was also quite easy to maintain (over this distance, at least!) and I wondered about upping it again, but I think the key at the moment is gently building consistency.

So 5 miles in 38.39, which is 37 seconds better than last week and way easier than the intervals that gave me a similar time on the 26th January.  As much as anything, the run left me feeling great… which is always welcome on a Friday!

Posted on

New splodge and a change in training tempo

Kim and I both bought new splodge during our visit to Run on Saturday and it was the inaugural outing for my pair today. I say outing, but as my plan is to use them only on the running machine for the time being, I should probably say inning.

Also, although my head has been in marathon gear for several weeks now, I have only just realised that both my mileage and the number of times I run each week should be higher.

Hence this gentle little 3-mile run today to stretch my legs out after yesterday’s long-un.  I clearly warmed up for too long before dialling in 7mph, as the average speed at the 3-mile mark was 6.92mph.  25 minutes, 53 seconds.

I’ll probably see what the result is when I wake up tomorrow morning, but rest assured that there will be more runs coming!

Posted on

21 seconds

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!

Posted on

Failure to average seven-point-something mph

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!

Posted on

Slow down Sally

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.

Posted on

Just a second

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.

Posted on

Bravado

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.