I'm feeling really good after my run today. Weekends always call for a long run and when I'm training for a half marathon, a long run could be anything between 12K & 18K which would take me anywhere from 90 to 135 minutes. But now that I'm training for a faster 10K, I've kept my long runs down to 1 hr. The strategy is to run a little further every week in that 1 hr. I expect that I should gradually be able to bring the distance up to 10K from what its currently at.
Last week I could only go 8.3K in 1 hour. Thats an average pace of 7'14". Keeping that as my base, I drafted a 30 week plan the end of which had me running 10K in an hour through gradually quickening my pace by 5" every two weeks. This week's target was set at 8.37K (avg pace 7'10"). For easy computation, I set out today with a round figure of 8.4K in mind. Breaking the hour down to 15 minute intervals, my target for each interval was 2.1K.
I had my eye on the time the whole way through but I found myself zipping along faster than my goal pace without much exertion. 2.2K then 4.35K, Then 6.5K and finally 8.7K. Thats an average pace of 6'53" which is awesome! Maybe it was just a freak day where everything was just right - hydration levels, nutrition, glycogen stores in the muscle, humidity, temperature and the stars aligned just right to let me have an awesome run. Or maybe, just maybe, my fitness level has improved with two weeks of consistent training. In any case, I am now going to try and maintain this same pace over the next few weeks (6'50 -6'55") and hopefully achieve the final target by the end of 26 weeks as opposed to 30.
Watch this space.
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