runography

Revise your training program, that’s what I decided to do 4 weeks ago and what a difference it has made having something to follow, rather than doing the adhoc running that I’d been doing for the first 2 1/2 months. I had been gradually increasing the distance over the 2 1/2 months but hadn’t really mixed up the sessions to include tempo work or speedwork. I suppose I had done a few sessions fast, but that’s not quite the same as a targeted gradual increase.

Yesterday was to be another long run, with the training program having me down to do:

Long Run
Dist: 7mi
@9:59 min/mi

With Roddy running through his achiles niggle he was back for this run. David also joined us as he’s now following a similar program, on Week 1 Day 4, to get himself ready for the MHFS 10k. Check out Davids Program. So David was to do:

Long Run
Dist: 6mi
@10:43 min/mi

We set off to do the figure of 8 run starting off from the bottom of Kilsyth, where it meets the Forth and Clyde Canal. There is an old quarry there and some nice rock faces, which are quite often used by climbers for practice. There is a car park there too which is pretty handy. As David didn’t know the area we stuck with him for the first part 1/2 of the run, then left him to complete the 6 miles, while we went off to do the rest of the 7 miler at a slightly faster pace.

Splits were:

• Mile 1@ 10:14 min/mi
• Mile 2@ 10:45 min/mi
• Mile 3@ 10:09 min/mi
• Mile 4@ 9:20 min/mi
• Mile 5@ 9:11 min/mi
• Mile 6@ 8:37 min/mi
• Mile 7@ 8:42 min/mi
• 0.79 Mile @ 8:19 min/mi pace

Total time: 1:13:37.30

The first few miles were easy, more or less a warmup. I’ve not been used to pacing someone else, so was quite surprised at how comfortable I was with it. I expected to be feeling it but even after the 3 miles I still felt great.

We upped the pace once we left Dave and our aim was to try and average 9:00 min/mi for the remainder of the run. We were a bit faster than that and managed to bring the total average down to 9:26 which was quite good. Although we were meant to do 7 miles we ended up doing a 7.79mile stretch. Another milestone as it’s again my longest ever run.

Next week the long run is 8 miles, I have almost done it already.