Posts Tagged ‘tempo run’

You Can Run, But You Can’t Make Your Computer Run

I can joke about it now, because I’m up and “running” again after a series of computer plagues of biblical proportions. I kid you not, in a single week I had a desktop hard drive, a laptop hard drive and a wireless router all independently leave us for a better world. They were all more than five years old, but it has been pretty frantic around here getting schooled in 2009 technology. Not to mention that I’m singlehandedly keeping Best Buy in business.

Fortunately, training is going great. I capped a 43-mile week with a 16-miler at 9:11 pace on Sunday, and this morning my six-mile tempo run finally surpassed my target marathon pace (8:12, for those keeping score at home).

Even better, the Carnival of Running will return tomorrow… unless my cable modem explodes.

Stepping Up After Stepping Down

Last week was a step-down week. I always have trouble judging my performance. Because it’s fewer miles should I run them harder? Or should I take advantage of the lower mileage and take it easy for the trials to come? I end up doing something about halfway in-between.

Anyway, my speedwork was probably the highlight of the week:

Intervals: 8 x 400 meters
Goal pace: sub-1:40
Lap 1: 1:38.76
Lap 2: 1:37.57
Lap 3: 1:35.89
Lap 4: 1:36.75
Lap 5: 1:37.27
Lap 6: 1:36.99
Lap 7: 1:36.79
Lap 8: 1:35.16
Average: 1:36.90
Total distance: 5 miles

Followed that up with five-mile tempo runs on Thursday and Saturday at 8:30 pace, and then a 10-miler yesterday at an average 8:47 pace, with the last three miles in 25 minutes.

Now begins the meat of my training – a 46-mile week culminating in a 16-miler on Sunday. Yee-hah!