Speed Work

I'm pretty disciplined with my long runs, and usually I'm good at sticking to my marathon training plan, but I'll admit that one area where I've fallen down has been my speed work. My excuse has been that whilst working it's been difficult to fit in, especially when my run has often doubled as my commute home, and trying to add speedwork into a run down the Fulham Road is never going to be easy when you have to stop, start and weave through crowds.  


Speed is my main downfall. I'm a slow runner, and I'm not great at picking up my pace, but my personal trainer keeps telling me that a 4 hour marathon is within my reach. I'm sceptical about this, but I'd be over the moon if I could make this happen. 

I'm not working this week, so I took time this evening to go out and do some speed work, namely Yasso 800s. I was expecting it to be a bit of a chore, but I actually found it fun, the breaking up a run into smaller chunks really makes all the difference. The workout involved a 2 mile ish warm up and cool down either side and then the Yasso 800s in the middle - running 800 metres in 4 mins and then a 400 metres of slow jogging to take about the same time as it took to complete the 800. I repeated this 6 times and found it if not easy (the pace for me was a challenge but not undoable, I was pushing myself, but not to the limit by any means), then very, er, entertaining. It was probably my most enjoyable 9 miles to date. 


It also helped that I did my speedwork in nice repeating laps around St James Park. I do like a bit of order with my workouts. 

Image from Google Maps.