Over the last 3-4 months, I just forgot how much I love running fast. Now of course fast is relative, on a single tracl repeat I would struggle to keep up with Mary Keitany while she is scorching her way to a sub 2:20 marathon, but for me it's blinding fast, and it's thrilling! I haven't done a true speed workout since mid August. as session of 6 X 800 at 90s per lap. My body sent out alarm signals after that workout, and to get through marathon training I dropped the fast stuff and instead supplemented my endurance runs with session of long marathon pace repeats that eventually became one continuous running. Looking back those were long arduous sessions. There was no rush just work, work, work. That's not to say I didn't enjoy them, but going round at 1:44-1:48 per lap for 5-10 laps worth per repeat is a different kind of beast to even 90s laps.
After my harrowing but amazing experience doing my first marathon I was concerned for my speed. Leading up to the marathon I had run my 10km PB of 39:04 and them lowered my half marathon PB to 1:25:28, but those races came 10 and 5 weeks before the marathon respectively. With no speed work, the only reminder that I still had anything approaching a fifth gear were a couple of ~5km time trials where I was able to hit 3:40/km splits admittedly on elevation conjusive to fast times...i.e dowhill! I had convinced myself I would have to start again.
Post-marathon, I endeavoured to take 2 weeks off but I couldn't stay away and ended up following Hal Hidgons recovery plan, well the first two weeks of it. It involves gradually easing back in and to be honest the first couple of runs hurt a lot. By week 2 though I managed a 6km tempo and the aforementioned time trial, and my legs were suddenly remembering something they used to do long before marathon training had become the routine.
The feeling the way back slowly after the marathon comeback race
I decided to enter a 10km on 17th November that promised a flat, fast and easy route. This being a Gauteng race in Pretoria, I was skeptical of that description but I really wanted to get out anyway. The race was at the Kolonnade Retail Park in Montana, Pretoria North, a bit out of the way but some careful planning, pre-entering and leaving reasonably meant it was a stress free morning and I even managed to warm up properly. Making my way to the start I was relieved to see that it looked as if walkers and runners had a separate start. A relief, I thought.
I positioned myself close to the start balloon, which I hoped would help me get away fine. While I wasn't planning to race I hate getting caught up in the pack early. Bizarrely, the runners were filling in from the front, so my position in close proximity to the start quickly became in not so proximity to the start. This meant that getting away was difficult once the gun went, 6 minutes later than the scheduled start. Then the separate start for runners and walker proved to be ineffectual as the merge was literally immediate meaning there was another bottleneck as soon as the merge took place. Grrr.
This is my pace graph from my Garmin
 |
| Ridiculous |
From that point on it was just bliss. I ran a perfect race, dismissing immediately an fears I had about marathon running obliterating my raw speed. The read out from the Garmin is delight. Other than the first kilometre and the 9th kilometre, every split was below 4:00 and just one slower than 3:50. In reality I am actually in better 10km shape than I've ever been. Taking out that horrific start, I was rocking along at 3:50/km for almost 10km, and with my own loose maths, would have knocked out something in the region of 38:30. The course was 90% flat with about 60m eleveation but having just run a marathon two weeks before I will take that! My unofficial time was 39:16 just 12s short of my PB and in the race conditions and my own physical condition I think it is still a really good time and something for me to build on going forward.
To Tempo and To Interval
Whilst I have already chose my next marathon (Slow Mag, 14 April 2013) and have a rough skeleton of a shorter (12 weeks) but higher mileage program (90km/week peak and and an average of 72km/week), I have decided to keep myself busy by running fast in the forthcoming 9 weeks, starting with a goal to break my 10km PB. My goal is aggressive sub 38:00 and ideally a 90s PB which would put me in the 37:30 range. I genuinely believe I have the leg speed to do it but I need to seriously worked on my pace stamina and also just need to be brave on race day! My training now is 6 weeks long and involves 3 weeks of stamina based efforts, 2 weeks of speed and a week to mini taper to the Old Years race in Pretoria on 29 December, a flat fast course with a sting in the tail
To work on that stamina means running my favourite workout, tempos! Tempos were staple of my running diet for the first half of the year and I believe were the primary contributor to my initial wave of PBs. They gave way to more endurance but now I can devote one weekly run to this workout. I plan to start off at 20miutes and build up to 35 minutes of tempo pace running by the end of my program. The tempos will be supplemented with cruise intervals later on as I do raw speed training. My first tempo this week was a ~7km run (7.4km it ended up as) with a 5km portion at tempo pace. My tempo zone is 3:50-4:00 and I nailed the 5km in 19:30 (3:54 pace), right in the zone and pretty much even pace/
Today, I did a session of short track intervals, 10 x 400m, looking for control, good form and most of all consistency.While I keep thinking I have done speed work, in reality until today, I could count the number of genuine interval sessions I had done in the past 10 months on my two hands, and none of them were particularly high intensity or high volume. While I have slowly been warming up to running laps, and will extol the virtues of the task to anyone who asks, I am not overly enthusiastic about the monotony and have rather done fartleks on the road instead.
So I wasn't really sure what to aim for but since my 10km best case target pace is 3:45 I wanted a string of sub 90s 400m to get these creaky legs turning again. And since it was early on in training I didn't want to push too hard hittin 5km pace and faster. This is how it went in raw numerical detail.
To Tempo and To Interval
Whilst I have already chose my next marathon (Slow Mag, 14 April 2013) and have a rough skeleton of a shorter (12 weeks) but higher mileage program (90km/week peak and and an average of 72km/week), I have decided to keep myself busy by running fast in the forthcoming 9 weeks, starting with a goal to break my 10km PB. My goal is aggressive sub 38:00 and ideally a 90s PB which would put me in the 37:30 range. I genuinely believe I have the leg speed to do it but I need to seriously worked on my pace stamina and also just need to be brave on race day! My training now is 6 weeks long and involves 3 weeks of stamina based efforts, 2 weeks of speed and a week to mini taper to the Old Years race in Pretoria on 29 December, a flat fast course with a sting in the tail
To work on that stamina means running my favourite workout, tempos! Tempos were staple of my running diet for the first half of the year and I believe were the primary contributor to my initial wave of PBs. They gave way to more endurance but now I can devote one weekly run to this workout. I plan to start off at 20miutes and build up to 35 minutes of tempo pace running by the end of my program. The tempos will be supplemented with cruise intervals later on as I do raw speed training. My first tempo this week was a ~7km run (7.4km it ended up as) with a 5km portion at tempo pace. My tempo zone is 3:50-4:00 and I nailed the 5km in 19:30 (3:54 pace), right in the zone and pretty much even pace/
Today, I did a session of short track intervals, 10 x 400m, looking for control, good form and most of all consistency.While I keep thinking I have done speed work, in reality until today, I could count the number of genuine interval sessions I had done in the past 10 months on my two hands, and none of them were particularly high intensity or high volume. While I have slowly been warming up to running laps, and will extol the virtues of the task to anyone who asks, I am not overly enthusiastic about the monotony and have rather done fartleks on the road instead.
So I wasn't really sure what to aim for but since my 10km best case target pace is 3:45 I wanted a string of sub 90s 400m to get these creaky legs turning again. And since it was early on in training I didn't want to push too hard hittin 5km pace and faster. This is how it went in raw numerical detail.
| Interval | Time | Pace (/km) | Recovery (300m) |
| 1 | 86 | 03:35 | 86 |
| 2 | 84 | 03:30 | 86 |
| 3 | 83 | 03:27 | 91 |
| 4 | 83 | 03:27 | 92 |
| 5 | 83 | 03:27 | 96 |
| 6 | 82 | 03:25 | 90 |
| 7 | 82 | 03:26 | 90 |
| 8 | 82 | 03:25 | 92 |
| 9 | 81 | 03:23 | 95 |
| 10 | 76 | 03:11 | 93 |
| Average | 82.2 | 03:25 | 91.1 |
To be honest I was really surprised with that outcome, both the pace and the relative comfort with which I managed them. Somewhere in the middle of intervals 7 and 8 I doubted I would get through but by the 9th I was good again. And the 76s was on a whim, I just decided to push a little bit harder and see what would happen. What really makes me happy is that other than the two outliers the first and the last, that is some pretty consistent running, and I didn't struggle too much as the session progressed. Later on this will be bumped to 12 x 400 and I'm not even remotely worried anymore. While I knew I would I would enjoy the tempo, I was expecting some serious burn.
Coming up I will do some 800s and 1000s before revisiting the 400s again in week 4, then closing off with 1000s in week 5 and low volume 800s in the final week, all hopefully at this pace of 3 around 3:25-3:35, corresponding to 3km-5km pace for my target 10km time. Week 4 and 5 will also see me doing mile repeats at cruise interval pace so closer to 8km pace just to maintain some stamina.
I have once check point, a 10km race on 8 December where I should be comfortable running at or just faster than my current PB pace of 3:54. I'm not going for any fireworks just yet and will in fact be doing that race at the top end of my tempo zone.
So post-marathon running is off to a joyful and fast start and I hope to keep it up!
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