Thursday, July 8, 2010

Tonight's run

I ran pretty hard tonight, considering that I'm supposed to be in recovery mode this week.

I read somewhere that after a race, you should rest and do easy runs for the number of days equal to the number of miles of the race.  My last race was just over 6 miles, and tomorrow will be day 6 post-race.

Anyway, I've had my pace on my mind alot lately.  It seems like my pace has hit a plateau.  When I started running, it seemed like my pace was constantly improving.  From one week to the next, my comfortable pace would improve 10 or 20 seconds.  Then, it just flat-lined.  I've been stuck around 10min/mile for a while now.

Then again, for the past month or so, I've been mostly focused on improving my endurance.  I had a 10k coming up, and I wanted to be able to go the distance.  So I haven't really done much speed work.

Plus, it's summer now.  It's hot and/or humid every run.  I think that's slowing me down.  In fact, I'm hoping that maybe it's a good sign that I'm maintaining my pace as summer creeps in.

But tonight I guess I wanted to show myself that I could run fast, and I'm also impatient about getting started with some speed work.  So I mixed in some fartleks tonight - I would pick a point up ahead (like a tree or something), and run really fast to it, then slow down to another random point, then fast to another point, etc.

I feel like I've established a decent endurance base, so I'm really going to put an emphasis on being consistant with my speed work as I prepare for my next 5k in October.  My goal is to get in at least one, no more than two, speed workouts every week.  I'm thinking intervals on Tuesdays, tempo runs on Thursdays.

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