Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Two Terrible Tempo Tries = Foolish Fartlek

Now that I've been pain-free for a month or so, it sure would be nice, methinks, to add some quality. If I could.

I may have noted in the past that I have been doing speedwork: 1200 meter repeats - on the mill. But I don't do very good with them. I have this nasty habit of stepping off or holding on to the mill rails when things get tough. Even if I didn't do those things, mill running still isn't the same as the real thing.

So I have been trying to get outside more. It helps when the weather isn't downright terrible, and it really hasn't been so bad lately. The problem occurs when I combine outside running with any kind of quality. For this week's runs I tried on two occasions to get down to tempo pace. By my own definition, a tempo run is three or more consecutive sub-seven minute miles. If you guessed that I wasn't able to do so for these two runs, you'd be right. Since I did speed up and slow down at times, I called them fartlek runs. But even that's stretching things a bit.

And I know the reason why I am unable to do tempo runs anymore. I can't run three consecutive sub-seven minute miles because I can't run one consecutive seven-minute mile.

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