13km speed

This week's speed workout was scheduled for a 13km run. Being that the group no longer seems to meet for these speed workouts, I did mine this morning, though there was nothing speedy about it. Weather was wonderful and I had a good 13km run.

speedless workout

I wanted to do my run tonight because I needed to get out, but I was tired and had a headache. I hadn't eaten or even had a drink all day. The noisy kids tipped the scale and at dinnertime I decided to just go out and do it.

The speed workout was scheduled to be a tempo run, totaling 14km. I was not really in the mood to track that and figure out speeds and times, so i just went for a 14km run.

The going was tough but after a few kilometers it got better, though not faster. I still seem to be getting slower and slower with each run...

intervals

with no group run tonight, I decided to adjust the speed workout tonight. Scheduled was 14km of fartleks, but without a watch and without other people, it is just too much work to keep the times and speeds straight. So I just did estimated intervals.

I basically ran a 1km warmup, then alternated between about 800 meters at a "fast" pace with a few minutes of light jogging. Everything felt great and the run was uneventful.

hill repeat workout

I ran 11.25km of hill repeats tonight. Killer workout. very slow. legs still a bit sore from Friday

Recovery and "Speed"

Missed my recaps so I'll just mention my last two runs briefly..

Saturday night after returning from Jerusalem I ran a 14km recovery run around RBS.

Monday afternoon I had a small break in the day and did my speed workout then, running 11km. The tempo run was broken up as 4 cycles of 2000m at 10km race pace, with 4 minutes in between of easy jogging. I must say this was difficult and my legs felt sore and tired. I ran as fast as I could when I was supposed to, but it wasn't fast at all.

11km workout

11km speed workout today employing 15 cycles of 150meter strides, tempered by 600meter regular running in between each.

I just finished it. While I did not count the cycles, I did a very good job of estimating the distances and checking my gps tracker and alternating speeds at the right time. I dont know what speeds I ran, but that isn't the point - I ran my 150s at full speed, and a relaxed speed at the 600s.

As a light rain is expected this morning, the morning air was very humid - much worse than it has been the past few weeks...

10.35

Tonight was a speed workout but the big boys weren't there so the group that showed up just wanted to do a regular run. I tried to run with some seed at times but it just did not work as my legs were sore form yesterday's run, and tonight's route had some hills in it, so it was basically a regular run.

For some reason my Endomondo Activity Assistant stopped working so I have to transfer my details from Runkeeper to Endomondo even more manually than before. What a pain.

Anyways, 10.35km in just over an hour... not bad

Yasso 800s

Tonight's speed workout was scheduled for Yasso 800s. This means after a warmup run we would be running 7x800m at marathon pace with 400m of slow running in between each set.

I think I did pretty good, even though I don't have an accurate way of tracking this. I don't know what my marathon pace is so I basically just ran as fast as I could. I also could not accurately track my 800s and 400s, so I estimated and made calculations and checked my phone (RunKeeper) every now and then and kept more or less to the right distances. In the end it was a good run and I ran it at a good pace, though I have no way of knowing what each individual 800m was clocked at, with the 10km a whisker fast than the hour mark.

Intervals speed workout

In tonight's speed workout we ran intervals around Hanarkis St.  Basically we ran 1.6km fast, at 10km race speed, and then 4 minutes of light jogging. We did 5 cycles of this.

I ran the 5 cycles of 1.6km much faster than I thought I could. The fourth cycle was hard, and the fifth cycle was really hard ans a bit slower, but overall I ran a pretty good speed.

This is a short week so tomorrow will be a recovery run at some point and Wednesday will be a "long run" that si really medium run distance of 18km...

fast tempo

tonight's speed workout was a tempo run. Meaning a 1.5km warmup slow pace to start, a 1.5km slow cooldown to finish, and a tempo run in the middle.

A tempo run is a run the for 8km you run slightly faster than expected marathon pace.

Being that I don't know my marathon pace, I don't really know what to run, or what I can run. I do, however, know that if my marathon pace is going to be 6:30 I wont be running the marathon,so I figured I would try to run the tempo at slightly faster than 6.

Thankfully the entire run was downhill. Starting around Dolev in RBS, and then for the tempo out to the 10 and then on the 10 out to the Industrial Zone and then a cooldown for 1.5km back to where cars were parked to get us back to RBS.

I ran the tempo part at an average of 5:25mpkm which is amazing, but taken with a grain of salt because it is all downhill. I basically skipped most of the cooldown as I turned a bit early to finish the tempo by the cars to make sure I would not miss the rides home. I got in a small amount of cooldown. I ended up finishing 10km at a 5:33 pace

Speed Workout - noticeable improvement

Tonight was a speed workout. That means we basically ran a 5km race route. The first 2.5km was a very serious uphill, and then back. This was sandwiched between 3.5km runs to warm up, and at the end to cool down. The overall total was 12km.

The speed workout was the main part of the run. We started the 5km from across from the fire station in BS. We ran down to the traffic circle of Ben Zeev, made a left and ran up the whole Ben Zeev until the end (past the Kiryah Haredit), turned on Levi Eshkol to finish another 250m, turned around and ran back down.

We were told that it is a speed workout and we are meant to be pushing ourselves, and "we should be "suffering" as we run up Ben Zeev.

So off we were. It was encouraging because we were about 30 or so runners, so that always gives the run a bit of an extra boost.

So here is what happened. I ran the 2.5km uphill at an average pace of 5:27/km, which for me is an amazing pace. I actually did not realize how far it was going to be. I thought it was the traffic circle by Rashi, for some reason, that we were running to. When I got there and saw we had to go further, I deflated a bit.. Anyway, I felt good.

I think I have an extra benefit of doing a lot of my personal runs in RBS. Running in RBS means you are running some serious hills, no matter where or which way you run. So I by now have a lot of uphill experience. This uphill was not as steep as some of the uphills in RBS that I run, but it was longer. So I ran it pretty strong. I was even passing people. I am still not even close to the fast group, but I was not too far behind them on this run.

the way down was at an average pace of 5 /km.

Overall the whole 12km run was at an average pace of 5:28 /km.

I feel myself improving on each run. We have some interesting and exciting runs coming up, so look forward to some good posts!