Speed Work

In preparation for Wine and Dine Half, Avengers Half and the Dopey Challenge, I have made the decision that my usual haphazard style of training isn't going to be enough, and I need to start a proper training routine. This has meant the introduction of speed work. Yes, the dreaded speed work. Give me a long run any day, I suffer through speed work as I am not naturally very speedy at all.

Last week I decided to start easy and give 4 x 400m with 2 min recovery a crack, and my paces looked something like this

Repeat 1: 5:42 min/km
Repeat 2: 6:23 min/km
Repeat 3: 5:55 min/km
Repeat 4: 5:33 min/km

I realised after my first repeat that I hard probably gone out a little hard and needed to pull back to have some gas in the tank for the other 3 repeats. I completed this workout by myself and as I said before, I really did struggle. I found it hard to push myself and actually run at speed. So last night when I got a text from the local running group (Yep! You heard right- we have a running group here) that they were going to be doing some speedwork (6 x 400m with 1:30 recovery), I jumped at the chance. My paces looked something like this after this morning's group session

Repeat 1: 5:42 min/km
Repeat 2: 5:56 min/km
Repeat 3: 6:10 min/km
Repeat 4: 5:32 min/km
Repeat 5: 5:56 min/km
Repeat 6: 5:48 min/km

I was really impressed that I managed to keep up similar paces (even a little better) with 30 sec shorter recovery and 2 extra repeats. I really felt that running with the group pushed me harder and I actually really enjoyed the workout. Hopefully if I keep these kinds of workouts up I will be able to bring down my pace per km and finally run that sub 30 min 5k.

What do you normally do for your speedwork?

Ash :)