Friday, June 05, 2009

SPEED!!

In this steady spring (merging into summer) build-up I have been meaning to keep a little bit of speedwork in the mix. I didn't do a very good of that in May. The closest I got was a fartlek consisting of a couple of 1.6 km intervals in 6:00 min on the 2nd, the 3-km time trial on the 6th, and the 3-km time trial on the 28th (see last post). Most of my runs were "lower aerobic" with a couple of "upper aerobics", an "easy" or two and one or two barely qualifying as longs. I suppose that is why the improvement in my 3-km time trials was not especially dramatic.

So to try to redress this lack of speed-work, on Wednesday night, two days ago now, I attended the club's 6 x 1000 m interval workout. Oh, the first one felt horrible! I'm glad Joachim was there to drag me around. Somehow I ran faster than 3:50, but I wasn't sure how. Then, miraculously the second one was a totally different kettle of flathead. I went off feeling fast and the breathing much easier. 3:37! That took a bit out of me, but basically I think the cobwebs were blown away and I then ran 3:39, 3:41, and 3:40 before calling it a day (yes, that's only five for those who were counting). But I did run from work to the track and then home from the track for a 15-km day. Almost Hosakesque. But crikey! Nothing like this man, who seems to be training the house down!