Fartlek

Traditionally the weekend run is the long run of the week. But, being on maternity leave, and the past week in particular, it was actually easier to do my long run on Thursday.

So, Sunday, armed with new knowledge from The Complete Book of Running for Women, and after a long walk with a reluctant dog on Saturday to scope out suitable landmarks at approximately 200m intervals, I did my first bit of speed training.

There are many different ways of improving speed training (described in the book from page 283+):

• Fartlek - Sweedish for "speed play"...pick a landmark in the distance, run 'fast' to it, then slow to recover, then pick another...
• Pickups - more structured, and uping the pace for set time intervals (1min on, 1min off...) - can be combined with ladders/pyramids (increasing the times up the pyramid, then down again)...
• Intervals - upping the pace according to distance (400m on, 200m off)
• Tempo runs - sustained fast run for say 15mins (builds speed endurance) - a bit different from the above...
• Hill training - run up short or long hills - if your particularly masochistic then you can do hill repeats which is running up the same hill over and over!!!

I went for a slightly more structured fartlek - that is, I designed my run such that the landmarks were at 200m intervals - so a kind of "Fartlek interval run"! Ran for 2miles 200m on 200m off...results below.

You can see that I was running with an aim that my "on" periods were to maintain about 8:30minute miling (plus or minus 30s) and my "off" periods to maintain 10minute miling (plus or minus 30s). This I basically achieved (the 2 slow peaks are the turnaround point in my run, and towards the end when I stopped then decided to continue a couple more reps).

I think I need to double the "on" intervals, as per the book's description of intervals (400:200), rather than the 200:200 I did. This will make it easier to control my pace, as by the time I glanced at my watch a couple of times to check my pace, it was already time to slow.

The above graph was created with a new bit of freeware - SportTracks 3.0 - which I have not yet used in anger, but certainly lets me scale the plots (unlike the Garmin Training Center), and yet still allows plotting of a run over a satellite image.

In other news, Mr Taffi bought me 2 running magazines on his weekly food shop. I'll delve into those for useful snippits of wisdom too...

Runs this week - consolodate 5miles (more route planning to do...), another Fartlek/interval run, and hopefully a hill session (need to travel a bit to find some decent hills, but I have a few in mind!)