Once upon a time (back in 2009) I was a pretty awesome runner. I didn’t realise it though! I ran a 10k in September 2009 in 50:47. I finished 154th out of 353 runners and 22nd out of 119 women and my average pace was 08:10 min/mi.
I let my fitness slip a bit since then until this year when I figured it was probably time to do something about it. I generally run at lunchtimes, but slip some early morning longer runs in from time-to-time. For some reason I run far better in the morning on an empty stomach. I’m not great at pushing my body to do stuff. My attitude has always been that I’ll see what I feel like doing on the run. If my body feels like running quickly then I’ll run quickly, but if I feel a bit drained I’ll run a slower recovery run. I think this has probably resulted in quite slow progress and improvement, however, I have improved.
Lunchtime runs range from 3.5 to 4 miles about 4 times a week. Back in January I was completing these runs at around 12 minute miles. Now I’m up to about 9:30 to 10 minute miles depending on how I feel.
I’ve started looking into intervals for increasing my speed. I’m yet to find a good plan that I like, however, I read in a magazine that 2:1 was the optimal interval time (i.e. sets of 30 seconds sprinting and 15 seconds normal running). I’m yet to confirm that.
I thought I’d have a go at testing myself to see how fast I could run 2.5 miles. I picked this distance because there is a circular route near by that I run. I previously ran it in March in a time of 22:42 giving an average pace of 09:01 min/mi. Today I ran it in 20:26 with an average pace of 08:09 min/mi and my fastest mile (the first one of course) of 07:49. Quite how I managed the 6.2 miles at that pace back in 2009 is beyond me. Especially considering it was quite a hilly route compared with today’s flat one. It’s definitely something to work to anyway and I think with some good interval training I’ll get there again…
macros2muscles 