Strength Building

Thankfully the sore quads disappeared, the two consecutive rest days did the trick.

Tuesday I did a mini speed session. Two miles warmup, and then 4x1 mile on the track. 5:50, 5:56, 5:55, 5:58. All under 6 minute miles, but didn't feel as comfortable as they would have a few weeks ago. Two miles home for 8.

Wednesday, 8 miles easy, which turned out to be 7:10, and not pushing hard so happy with that.

Thursday tempo run. One mile warmup at 7:20, then into a 10 mile tempo session. As recently, I set the watch to 6:35 pace. The first few miles were honest enough, all at 6:32, 6:31 pace. And thankfully that continued. As I approached what I thought was 8 miles, I was getting pretty tired, but was reasonably pleased, and confident of finishing the last two miles strongly. The watch beeped, and turns out I had only 7 miles done at tempo pace. I did utter a few expletives! The last mile was pushing it, 10k effort, but I finished in 64:45 for the 10 miles, and another easy mile home for 12.

8 easy on Friday, which were actually easy, 7:30 pace average, but while I kept the pace easy, there was no soreness or obvious fatigue at the previous day's efforts.

Saturday was intended to be an easy 6 miles, but circumstances meant no run.

Sunday was a nice morning, and out I went for a planned 18 miles.
Plan was 10 @ 7:15, 4 @ 7:10, and last 4 @ 7:05.
It didn't really work out that way though. The wind was on my back on the out segment of the first 9 miles, and I just ran to a semi easy feel, which saw the first 9 miles at 7:06 average.
When I turned into wind, I realised why they had felt so easy. However, I had to adjust the plane, as there was no point in running the same pace all the way. So I kept the next 5 miles at the same pace, but because I was into a headwind, the effort has harder. The last 4 I decided to pick things up a bit to test myself. Mile 15, 7:01, 16, 6:51, 17, 6:53, 18, 6:58.

Finished well, and happy with the pace only a few days after the 10 mile tempo.

As always, Monday was a rest day, but looking back, I should have done an 8 mile easy run. My legs actually showed little sign of the previous day's run, and as it turns out, I didn't get out Tuesday, so that was two days with no run. The plus side of that, is that I believe I was a lot stronger in the legs after two days break last week, so maybe that will stand to me this week also.

I do however, feel exceedingly overweight today having not run for two whole days!