10 mile aerobic

I am now in the world of Pfitzinger and Douglas (commonly referred to as P & D.) Their training schedules emphasise long runs throughout the week with short recovery runs in between them. The Hal Higdon schedules tend to have short and medium runs in the week and one long run at the weekend. Rather than running at lunchtime I will now have to get better at getting out of bed early to do the long mid-week runs. A bit of discipline probably won't do me any harm!

The new regime kicked off this morning with a 10 mile aerobic run. I should probably be running these at about 8.30 min / mile pace based on a marathon pace of 7.30. However I don't like running that slow but I did manage to keep most of the miles down to 8 min pace which as an achievement for me.

The Garmin report shows that there is an elevation gain of about 60 meters in the first 2.5 miles with obviously a corresponding drop at the end as it was an out-and-back route. No wonder I have been running the last couple of miles fast.

It also showed that my mile markers were a bit short and what I thought was 5.0 miles is actually 4.9 miles. That sounds trivial but saving 0.2 miles on a 10 mile run could shave 90 seconds off my time. No wonder I got the pacing at Freckleton a bit wrong!

After the run I had an hour's "rest" and then I had to cycle the 6 miles to work. The cycling is not in the schedule but a bit of additional cross training does not seem to hurt.

This new schedule feels great! I now have my lunchtimes back.