Turning up the pace

I'm in a real meaty part of the training program. The miles aren't quite up there, in fact this was a quasi 'step back' week where I'd go lower on the mileage and effort.



This week, things changed a bit. I was making an effort to run a little harder and today, instead of doing a long slow distance, I went at a 8 minute mile pace (5 minute kilometres) for 13.1 miles.

Reason 1 is my pace bunny assignment in two weeks which at the time I volunteered felt like I'd have no problem but now, with some urgency, I got to get the pace work in in order to nail it down. Also wanted to get a feel for the pace and build some fitness so that race day is actually easy when you add the mysterious 'race day' magic. Today's run achieved that. Reason 2 is I've been getting the miles back into some reasonable marathon training mode and it was time to add the hurt.

The last seven weeks:
39 miles - First week of Jan
43 miles
35 miles
46 miles
49 miles
40 miles
43 miles - This week

This week's 43 were decent. I started most runs at a plus 8 mile pace and ramped each one that by the end I was going at a pretty good clip.

This week's mileage:
Tuesday: 8 miles - 7:43 mile average
Wednesday: 8 miles - 7:52 average
Thursday: 6 miles - 7:45 average
Friday: 6 miles - 7:48 average
Sunday: 13.1 miles - 8:01 average pace plus 2 miles warmdown