Week 8 Marathon Training and speed intervals!

After another boozy day abusing my body yesterday, today I had to put it through it's paces as the marathon plan stated 12 x 0.25 mile speed intervals keeping at a 8.00 to 8.10 minute mile pace.

I'm not good at intervals at the best of times, so I wasn't expecting good results today.

It was a cool and cloudy morning and the dark clouds looked slightly threatening so I decided to get on with my run before the weather changed for the worse!

I decided that since the plan said speed intervals that I would do laps of the river circuit as then I don't have any roads or hills to negotiate!  I did a mile and a half warm up before starting the 0.25 miles fast and 2 minutes slow intervals. I set my Garmin so that I wouldn't have to worry about keeping an eye on time etc  and lost myself in the job at hand.

It was only whilst starting my 4th circuit of the river when an old bloke said "That will be 4 times lass" that I realised he must have been sat on the bench watching this mad woman running literally in circles.  Feeling ever so slightly embarrassed at being rumbled I announced "Last time" and decided to go and finish my intervals on the cycle track instead!

I enjoyed the structure of the run and although I found it hard to keep to the desired speed I didn't do too badly in the end.

My splits for the 12 "fast" (8:00 to 8:10 minute mile pace) intervals were:  7.58, 8.04, 8.00, 8.12, 8.06, 8.05, 8.10, 8.13, 8.12, 8.08, 8.05, 8.55.

It was only during the final one that I was a total failure, the others were there or there abouts!

The total run was 8.22 miles at an average 9.15 minute mile pace.

That will do me!