Day 42 - driving pained legs over steep hills

Type - gradient / hill run

Distance - 4 miles

Time - 36 minutes 36 seconds

Back to the gym, this time Clissold Leisure Centre, for a gradient run. I kept the setting at level 11, and ran at this for a 25 minute programme and then a level run to get up to 4 miles. I still had enough in me to finish with a two minute sprint at 16 km/h. I think I willl stretch the hill programme to 30 minutes next time. I am certainly not ready to increase the intensity to the final level 12 - level 11 is still a tough work out.

But I managed to do an extra half a mile on last week's 3.5 miles in only 1 minute 36 seconds longer than last week's run. So progress of sorts.

I've just transferred all of these blog entries onto a single Notepad document for safekeeping. They amount to 15,000 words, and, perhaps more fitting to the fitness agenda, a total of 98.8 miles in 783.45 minutes (13 hours, 3 minutes and 27 seconds). That is just a shade under 8 minutes per mile, which reflects doing both interval, tempo and fartlek training as well as steady and hill training. I think, on balance, this number will stay pretty steady as the long runs will average between 8.5 and 9 minutes per mile, whilst the tempo, interval and fartlek training will be faster. It also makes sense to keep tabs on the total mileage, as trainers need to be replaced after about 500 - 600 miles.