Week 6.1: 9'20'' /km

[liv]

My phone broke so I couldn't properly measure my runs for a while. I decided the best plan was to do some 'free' running until I could get the phone fixed. I did a couple of 20 minute runs, and felt like I was improving, getting just a little further in the 20 minutes each time. And I tried running home from work one day, but that went pretty badly; I can run in my normal work shoes, but running in a skirt rather than leggings is a bit grim, and it was very hot and I was tired and the route was unfamiliar, so I only managed 10 minutes.

Today I got back to my old Zombies, Run! set-up, and tried the first workout of week 6. Week 6 is the weird one where you go back to intervals after completing the long run in week 5. The NHS programme I'm using says 5 minutes, 8 minutes, 5 minutes, but it suggests an 8 minute walking break after the middle run. That sounded pointless to me; I'm as recovered as I'm going to be after 5 minutes of walking. So I swapped it round and did 5 minutes, 8 minutes, 8 minutes, with a 5 minute break between the two long intervals.

I managed that short interval at the start decently fast, covering the first KM in 8½ minutes even though some of that was walking. Then I was a bit slower for the two long intervals, and ended up doing 3 km in 28 minutes, so an overall pace of 9'20'' per km. Part of me wants to try that again and see if I can improve the pace a little, but it's probably most sensible to go on to the second workout which is just two lots of 10 minutes.

Comments

[felicitygs]

Good work! I don't know about there, but here it's so hot all the time that doing faster work just makes me miserable. This is definitely the season for grinding out the distance, and waiting for the heat to break so you can go fast!