Thursday, 10 May 2012

Intervals,hill runs, strides and tempos


7th May

May Bank Holiday Monday. 1 mile warm up, 1 mile interval with 2 minute recovery, 1mile interval with 2 minute recovery. Legs were feeling like jelly at this point. 1 mile interval with 3.5 easy jog home. Splits for the interval miles were 6.40, 6.44 and 6.36. The last mile was my fastest despite finding it tough. HRM for last mile was  165. This was encouraging. Total mileage 7.7. Time on feet 63 minutes  (approx). Went to see the “Avengers” in Limerick. Bumped into the lovely Noreen Buckley, pro of North Cork AC. Preparations are starting for the Charleville half marathon in September.

8th May

Supposed to be up and out running at 6.15am, taking advantage of my 10.05 start in work. Managed to sleep in until 7.30 am instead. Came back from work at 5.10 pm and headed out. The lovely fresh evening really perked me up and I ran 8 miles. I wanted to do a deliberate pace of 8.30, slow enough to allow me to recover from yesterdays session but fast enough to set me up for faster running during the week. Completed the 8 miles quite easily in a time of 1.08.08, giving me 8.31 pace. Was happy with that but disappointed with my average heart rate of 154 BPM. The effort felt easy but it was higher than I hoped. Hopefully in time when the schedule has me running “medium” run of 15 miles, the time will improve and the heart dropped.

9th May

Ran up in Mayfield for this one.Haven’t ran up here in 10 weeks. Interesting route-first 3 miles take you from the highest point In Mayfield down to Leitrem st via the north ring road. A fast 3 miles. Mile 4,5,6 take you back up there again. Mile 4 and Mile 5 are pretty tough. Leitrem st-Wellington rd-St Lukes-Middle Glanmire rd-Montenotte-Iona Green. Mile 6 to Mile 7 are up and down. I ran the route struggled at mile 4 to mile 5 and used mile 7 as a cool down run. I finished the run with 6 or 7 X 0.1 strides. The heart rate was same as yesterday despite a harder effort. Some of the miles were completed at 7.17 and 7.07 pace

Ran 7.39 miles with 6 X 100 strides @ 0.1 mile. Average pace from Mile 1 – 6 was 7.47 minutes. Average HR 154 BPM

10th May

Jack Daniels, Pfitzinger, Higdon and all the other notables talk about the tempo run. You run 1 mile warmup at a controlled pace and then a portion at a fixed pace. Not all out but “comfortably hard”. You finish with a controlled warm down. You should be tired but not so beat up that you can’t continue running. That’s the theory anyway. Now for the practice....

I had to dispense with the warm up mile for various reasons and decided to do a 4 mile tempo with a 2 mile cool down. Left the house at 7.15pm. I was thinking about 7.20-7.30 pace for the tempo part. First mile went very well 7.24. Then I took off. Mile 2 6.55. Mile 3 7.05. Mile 4 7.02. Average heart rate – 163BPM. Delighted with the workout. I did a lot better than I hoped. Could have pushed for a 5 mile tempo but all in good time.

Cool down portion should have been slower 8.18, 7.35 with ½ mile in 3.40. Average heart rate 153BPM. No change in the heart rate when i run between 7.35 and 8.30 this week.
7th May 7.7 mile,  8th May 8 miles, 9th May 7.39 miles, 10th May 6.5 miles.

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