Thursday, July 5, 2012

Running Faster

Ed is a good friend of mine-- a fellow runner and running store employee. He's the one who helped me design the training plan I used for marathon back in February.

One thing he says is,"if you want to run faster, you're going to have to run faster." I find myself thinking about these words as I work to improve my base pace and see what else I'm capable of out there. I can hit cruise control at about 9:40 per mile and go a long distance. But now I'm wanting to lower that pace to about 9:00. I've been working on that for a few weeks. I've also added some 800 repeats at about 7:45 per mile, which is pretty fast for me.

I'm still not really training for anything-- thinking more about cranking out some half marathons after the first of the year, but no fulls. I'd like to have some other things happen in my life (and devote energy to these pursuits and not to extra runs) before I commit to another 26.2. It helps me see why half marathons are so popular-- it's a challenging goal that doesn't really alter the course of our lives.

With no real goal on the horizon, weekly mileages are in the 20-25 range, which is where I want to be. I've found it easier this season to get out the door earlier in the morning. I've been starting out a 7:00 am to get my work in for the day. In addition, looking back through the training log, it looks as though I'm doing a better job of running this summer than I did a year ago.

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