Getting one in

It's forecast to be a rainy Sunday tomorrow - so I got my weekend run in while I could. I ran at an effort rating of 6 or 6.5 out of 10 for most of the run, only sprinting the last 400m. The time? 53:30 for 7 miles. 7:30 mins/mile would have been nice, but 7:39 isn't all that bad either, when you consider I wasn't really trying too hard, or hadn't run anything past 5 miles in the last 5 or 6 months (I think). I did the first 5 miles at 7:30 pace, and as you can probably work out by now, it was between miles 5 to 7, the untested territory for me for a long while, that I started to lose speed.

The next mark I'm trying to aim for is to hold 7:30 for 6 miles. To help me get there, I'm going to try to do 5.5 miles at slightly faster than that pace, possibly 7:20s, and also squeeze in a couple of 4 milers on back to back days, rather than on every other day. For someone who runs as little as I do, I think running on a day's less rest will help add a slightly higher degree of intensity compared to running once every 2 days. It's still three days of running a week though - I'm on the lines of a "longer" (5.5 to 6 miles) run on day 1, then shorter ones on day 3 and 4, or 4 and 5. That's all I can afford, but maybe when we get closer to the end of term I might be able to run a bit more.

I've run a bit more that 13.1 miles this week, but that's been a pretty rare occurrence. Still, capping the number of miles I run each week has generally been a positive experience. I have a few ARIDs every now and again, but on the whole I still enjoy running - can't argue with that!