15 April - Sessions 92-95

2045 BST - Lazy again I guess...not really. Been pretty busy this week. Training has been continuing well though. After resting Monday I went out Tuesday for some hill running. Getting this deep into my program  the speed workouts are pretty challenging. This was 12 x 30 sec up hill. I wanted something tougher than the hill I usually run, so I picked a new hill. It's pretty short, but steep...8.4% grade. Steep for me anyway. I don't think I reached my 90% target heart rate on any of the reps because of the short distance. I ran as hard as I could but didn't quite get there. I walked down 3 or 4 times towards the end to get my HR back down. Even though I quite get up to my target HR, I still had a good work out. My glutes were sore for 2 days afterwards!

Ten miles @ 70% was on tap for Wed. It was tough getting going because my glutes were so sore from the hill workout! It was a good workout. 7:31 min/mile avg pace over the run at 142 bpm. My fitness really has improved over the past 3 months. Before I started the same pace would have been probably 160-165 bpm. Thinking back, I'm not sure I could have sustained it for 10 miles. I had been running 10 miles at about a 7:50 pace.

Another speed workout for Thursday. 5 x 1 mile repeats. Tough! I would have preferred to do it on the track, but I was travelling to London for a conference, so I had to get up early and just run near the house instead. It was tougher because the course wasn't flat like the track. I didn't sleep well the night before (in part because I was dreading the workout!) so I was tired...not to mention it was 0400! Like Tuesday I didn't quite achieve my target HR, this time 88%. My max for each mile was >88%, but average for each was a few bpm less. Still, I worked hard. There were some mitigating factors, fatigue, hills, and as I was saying before I have to run pretty fast now (< 6 min pace) to reach that intensity.

No running today (Friday) only SnC with Paul. I warm up in the pool swimming laps for about 30 min too. As always, another tough session.

Easy run tomorrow and the family and I are taking a little weekend road trip to Mildenhall. Should be interesting running my LSD on Sunday. 20 miles in a place I'm not familiar with! Will be fun though. I like exploring!

Edinburgh Marathon Training Session 92
Edinburgh Marathon Training Session 93
Edinburgh Marathon Training Session 94