Silver linings

My plan has gotten a bit mucked up this week.

FIRST called for 3 x 1600 this week, which was awesome as I had my eye on a casual local 5k after work. My team from Sunday was planning to do it, and I worked out a few handicaps for us to compete- winner gets beer, or something. A had to break 21:00, P just had to keep himself below 20:00, M had to break 21:45 and I had to break 22:30 (I think I was a little hard on myself- 23:00 would have been challenge enough!)

Unfortunately, it was not to be. C reminded me in the morning that I had agreed to run with her after work- to help her with a fast paced run. Grr. Stupid Kate! I didn't mind helping C, I like helping her, and I like running with her- I just really wanted to race! So C and I did 12k after work, averaging about 9:40 pace). I'm still not convinced that I am working her hard enough- I judt don't know how to push her. I met up with the others after they'd had their beers. M was the winner of the handicap competition, he smashed his goal by doing 20:36! But P was the first of them to finish (19:57- my boy is amazing) and A was the first woman OVERALL!! Woohoo! She also got a decent PB (21:12- previous PB was 21:30ish, I think) so she has a lot to be proud of. I also found out that I would almost certainly have placed.

Big GRRR

But every cloud has a silver lining, and doing a 5k last night would have meant I couldn't do my replacement speedwork this morning. I decided to switch the 3 x 1600 to next week, to encourage me to do the 5k race next Tuesday, and instead did 10 x 400 (except I was running late so did 8 x 400). I felt pretty good. Some of my intervals were a bit over, but I have calculated my 400m equivalent. Here we go:

1:35
1:33
1:30
1:32
1:29
1:30
1:27
1:27

How fast am I?? So fast I can't even see me ;-)

My legs were killing me by laps 7 and 8, but looking at my splits I can see why.

This is the first time my splits have been accurate, so I can't do any realistic comparison. Maybe I'm not faster than I was. I also had a tail wind every time. Cheater. I don't care. It's worth it to see sub-6:00 pace. I kick butt.

Incidentally- I know it's bad to do my long runs too fast and my tempo runs too slow. But what about speedwork? Is it bad to go under pace, or should I keep trying push the intervals down? I've been assuming speedwork is for going hard, and I'm not going *too* hard..

I am going to try to do my tempo run Thursday night or Friday morning. A bit naughty, as it will mean several days in a row of running, but I don't want to miss another tempo session, and my long run this weekend will be at a veeeery easy pace. I think it will be OK. I still have 5 weeks to go, and I will not be doing hard XT over the next few days. So unless anyone tells me very strongly not to, I am going to fit my key runs in.