Speed Work - 7 x 1 mile repeats

We did speed work tonight at Gibbon's Park in London. This time, the legendary John Ferguson had us do up to 7 repeats of 1 mile at a pace roughly 30 to 60 seconds per mile faster than the target marathon pace. While my target pace last year was 7:51 per mile, I started the run looking for a 7:08/mile pace. But I kept beating it! Eventually I settled into a 7:00/mile target, but was able to beat that pace consistently -- even at the end. Here are my splits:

6:53
6:58
6:54
6:59
7:00
6:51
6:50

So, my gaggle of running buddies -- Bruce, Chris & John -- and I did extremely well. Certainly the cool weather helped, but so to has the consistent weekly runs that Johnny puts us through.

Long Run - 21.1k at 5:32 average pace per k.

Kelly Vivian, Jenny and I went out for a long run today. We did 12 km around Lucan, and then I ran home (and added another 1.6k on William Street) to get me to 21.1 km -- done in 1:56:38 running time (there were a few walk breaks in the first 12k) for a 5:32 pace. I've committed to pacing Gayle Stuebing in Hamilton's Road2Hope Marathon in November and we need to knock off a pace of 5:41/k, so I was happy with my average pace. My solo 9.1 km were at about a 5:15 pace and I had no problem maintaining it.

Speed Work - Parloff Relay, Part Deux...

We did a Parloff relay tonight -- 25 minutes of Jenny and I each doing a 400m lap of the track at UWO. Looking at what I did the previous relay on July 15, I achieved 1:31 per lap and Jenny was at 1:40 per lap. This time, our times were:
1:27 (Bruce)
1:49 (Jenny)
1:25 (Bruce)
1:44 (Jenny)
1:27 (Bruce)
1:44 (Jenny)
1:22 (Bruce)
1:42 (Jenny)
1:22 (Bruce)
1:40 (Jenny)
1:23 (Bruce)
1:37 (Jenny)
1:23 (Bruce)
1:37 (Jenny)
1:19 (Bruce)
1:33 (Jenny)
1:18 (Bruce)

It was certainly cooler out tonight as opposed to July 15, but I also simply felt stronger. My average was 1:23 per lap (x 9 laps instead of 8 last time) and Jenny's was 1:41 -- almost exactly what she did in July (and she didn't feel like she was running that strongly). So it was a good night!

1 km Repeats

We did kilometre repeats down at Gibbons park today. The weather was good -- a bit warm, but not terrible. I was targeting 4 minute kilometres x 7 repeats, with 2 minutes rest in between. Here is how it ended up:

4:13

4:03

4:00

4:01

4:06

4:21

4:18

The first kilometre could have been faster -- the group of us were all conserving, but conserving a bit too much. After that, we were all pretty consistent. But I couldn't stay with the group after the 5th repeat -- it was all I could do to knock off the 4:20's that I did.

The good news, though, was that my hips weren't sore, as they had been when we first started doing speed work. My back was a tiny bit sore that night, but nothing serious. So it is possible that all this speed work is having the positive effect for which we've been looking!

Ladder - 400 m to 1.6 km and back...

Tonight we did a "ladder" for our speedwork. I was targeting a pace of 1:45 per 400 m. Here are the times I was able to achieve:

400m: 1:32
800m: 3:19
1200m: 5:04
1600m: 6:45
1200m: 5:10
800m: 3:27
400m: 1:36

Breaks between each of 200m, which varied between 1.5 and 2.5 minutes.

So I beat the target time each loop, but it got harder as the times went on.

Speed Work - Parloff Relay

Jenny and I did a Parloff Relay today at Runner's Choice speed work, held at TD Waterhouse Stadium in London today. We did 400 m. loops of the track and passed off the baton to each other. Here were our times:

1:33 (Bruce)
1:42 (Jenny)
1:34 (Bruce)
1:41 (Jenny)
1:33 (Bruce)
1:38 (Jenny)
1:36 (Bruce)
1:39 (Jenny)
1:31 (Bruce)
1:43 (Jenny)
1:29 (Bruce)
1:42 (Jenny)
1:29 (Bruce)
1:41 (Jenny)
1:20 (Bruce)
1:37 (Jenny)

My left hip was really sore afterwards -- started getting sore when I was into my second lap. But 5 ibuprophen later and I felt okay and was able to sleep. The next day, Brian and I went for an 8k run and the hip was fine.

Easy run - 3.5 miles...

Speed work was hard last night and it was hot today. We ran from Brian's place, around to the Van Arenthals trail, through Huggy's Trail, down to the Clandeboye Curve and back to Brian's Fridge. Total distance 3.5 miles in 29:30. Beer tasted great!