# 31 - Speed Sunday

The plan today was to do the loop of 1.678 miles as speedwork. I'd actually been looking forward to that over the past few days, believe it or not. The way I viewed it was as a "get it done quick" session. Come this morning, though, I felt like I'd rather do 5 miles at a slower pace. Anyhow, I got it done in 11:20, 6:45 minutes per mile, then jogged back home and did some free squats, to get my heart going above 60%MHR for slightly over 20 minutes. I didn't need to look out much for times along the way when running - I know if I'm putting down a pair of footsteps for each inhalation and exhalation(?), then I'm on track for a quick time, which brings up a point I've noticed over the past few runs: Cadence seems more important than foot stride. I seem to run faster times when I concentrate on plonking down footsteps, than by thinking "open your stride, cover more ground".

11:20 for that loop seems to be the limit for me at the moment - I suppose I'll have to do shorter and more frequent bouts of 800s or 1000s to try to lower that time to about a 11:15 or 11:10.

I expect to do 4 miles under 30 minutes on Tuesday and 5 miles on Thursday. If I keep this up I'll get to #39 by the end of this month, but let's not jinx it by getting greedy.

Have a good week and happy running!