Thursday 21 January 2010

Day 269 - a treadmill is a dreadmill no more

Type - Interval training

1 mile jog, 1 mile fast, 400 metre recovery x 4, 1 mile jog

Distance - 7 miles

Time - 54 minutes and 53 seconds

It was with a touch of apprehension that I locked my bike at the Clissold Leisure Centre, took my entry ticket and wrist band and climbed the stairs to the gym. My last interval training session at the LSE gym had been really difficult, and I that was at pretty 'relaxed' speeds. I wasn't sure why I wasn't able to translate the speeds I could outside to what I could do on the treadmill.

There were two differences with today's run. Firstly it was only one mile bursts, rather than the 1.5 miles of last weeks (albeit four of them rather than three, and with half the recovery time), and I was doing it at Clissold Leisure Centre rather than LSE on brand spanking new equipment. I wondered whether any of this would make a difference.

It seemed to. Whereas last week I struggled with an initial 13 km/h for the fast run before sinking this down to 12.5 km/h, this time I dug in for 13.8 - 14.0 km/h for the mile runs, with sprint finishes for the last 500 metres of up to 16 km/h (on the last one).

This gave me an average speed of 14.22 km/h for the fast sections, which was pretty darn good all things considered. It was tough going, and by the end felt like I had done a ridiculous work out, but it was totally worth it.

This felt like one of my stronger training sessions, and I was very pleased with the results. Jarlath and Runner's World are both clearly right in pointing out that these sessions will make all the difference.

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for sharing your blog. It is fascinating to read about others' efforts. Keep up the running times and the writing. I am planning to come to London to watch you (and maybe shout out!)

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