Ended up with a pretty decent week mileage wise last week but more interestingly in a VERY nice week in average pace. 36.22 miles run in 5:01:18 for an average pace of 8:19/mile, my fastest average pace over a week since the week that ended with my half marathon DNF in early May. And I didn't even sacrifice any recovery run (did 7 km of that with HR<110) or easy run (had a 7 km of that too, with HR<125) and only had a 30 minutes progression run. The hills workout was a grind but not superfast but the two weekend run were at good pace...
I did my usual 7 km recovery run this morning and hit a neat milestone. It was the first time in any of those recovery run that I was able to keep my average heart rate under 110 BPM while at the same time averaging a pace faster than 6:00/km (9:39/mile).
I'd had a some runs getting close but never faster than 6:00/km. Gotta be happy with those little wins that happen in something as simple as a recovery run...
I'm entering week 7 of 12 in my half marathon plan, already half way done... I'll be on vacation from my job starting next Monday so the next three weeks should make for lots of fun running on my own schedule.
Training plan for the week:
MON: 7 km recovery run
TUE: 6x 800m @ 10K pace
WED: 7 km easy run
THU: 45 minutes progression
FRI: Rest
SAT: 8 km @ HM pace (1 WU + 1CD)
SUN: 2 hours easy long run
TOTAL: 40.6 miles
Starting with week 7, Hal Higdon's plan moves away from teh 400m @ 5K pace and the hills session and goes into longer interval work, namely 800m @ 10K pace and mile repeats @ race pace. Had some good back and forth with the runners on the Lose It forums about tomorrow's interval session. A fairly experienced runner over there was talking about his 800m repeats and when he mentioned his split goal times, I figured he was running them way faster than 10K pace, probably even faster than 5K pace. Most of the others said they ran their intervals about the same way, i.e. at least 5K pace for the 800m and maybe even faster.
I've had great success so far with Higdon's plans and while I ran the 400m intervals a bit faster than his prescribed 5K pace, I wasn't running them at mile pace. Based on my 5K time of 19:26, my 5K pace of 3:53/km would predict a 10K pace of about 4:02/km according to Jack Daniels's calculator. Again, the mind needs convincing as I find that mighty fast.
I'll probably try to hit close to 4:00/km or about 3:12 per 800m repeat.
Finally, looking ahead, I see myself running the equivalent of a half marathon for four Sundays in a row.
When I originally devised my plan, I had planned my easy runs to be run at about 5:30/km with race pace at 4:30/km. I've since revised my race pace to closer to 4:20/km and my easy run pace, which is dictated by keeping my HR at or below 125 BPM, has started averaging more around 5:20/km. The easy portion of yesterday's long run was done at an average of 5:24/km.
I got these long runs in the next three weeks...
this Sunday: 120 minutes all easy (@5:30/km that's 21.8 km)
next Sunday: 120 minutes with 30 minutes @ HM pace (should come to 23.3 km)
following Sunday: 135 minutes (2h15min) all easy (about 24.5 km)
Last Sunday wasn't supposed to come to 21.1 km but it felt good to get that out of the way.
Now, had anybody told me just one year ago that in 12 months time I'd be doing half marathon length runs every Sunday over a span of four weeks, I'd have called them crazy. But here I am, who's crazy now?
FM