On the right track - hopefully!!

My plan over the next few weeks is to make sure that I get in 2 good workouts, e.g. tempo, interval or long progression runs, per week with a steady long (i.e. 10+ miles) run over the weekend with some easier recovery runs also thrown into the mix. I think that this will plan set me up well for the half marathon in early December and give a good base for the new year.

So the quick session this week was a 5+ mile fartlek. I hadn't run one of these in ages and it felt good. No pressure to hit particular mile splits and the freedom to increase/decrease the pace as I saw fit. The quicker bits of the session generally ranged from 5:50 - 6:30 min/mile pace for durations of 1 to 4 minutes. Recoveries were 7:00 to 7:30 pace. Overall, I averaged 6:44min/mile for 5.25miles and it felt easier than some of my progression runs which tend to have a similar overall average pace.

I went for my long run yesterday and I decided to repeat last weeks 11.62 mile run - just a bit quicker. This week I passed through 10 miles in 69:32min with an average of 159bpm and an average cadence of 78.6rpm. I felt pretty good and fresher than last week and I was a minute quicker! From 10 miles onwards I took it a bit easier and overall I completed the run in 1:22 (over 2 minutes quicker than last week). Hopefully that progress will continue!!

Also, recently I've been playing around with some of the "Evolution Running" techniques (thanks to an introduction by Rick) so it was nice to see the cadence during yesterday's run increase without any increased effort - maybe I'm perfecting a 'slightly' more efficient technique!!

Yesterday's run..


An easy 6.25 run today nicely rounded off the week.... 5 weeks to go to Waterford.


Have a good week everyone.