Bryan's Running Blog

Bryan,

You're amazing. I ran one mile today at about the same pace as your first and that was enough for me. Perhaps we should try to do this same type of work out together a couple times each week so that we can encourage each other. I'm struggling to hold that pace but I think it's mostly in my head and not my feet because I'm typically pretty comforable at the 6:00 pace. I need to keep working at it.

I'm very impressed with your run!

Thanks Zac. Yes, I like your idea. My only hesitation is that I'm planning to actually run a little longer run on Saturday, which means my mileage will be somewhere around 45 for the week -- which is about 10 miles farther than it's been any other week. I've heard it's not good to try and increase speed and distance at the same time. Because of this, my plan was to run the two miles at 6:00 pace once this week and once (or maybe twice) next week. What if we plan to do the fast two miles next Tuesday? Another idea would be sometime later this week, say Thursday, we could try and run 7 miles averaging a sub 7:00 minute pace?

You're probably right. Maybe we should just wait until next week or the week after before pushing it too much, given the increased mileage. I didn't see this response until today so I actually tried a fast run yesterday. I was surprised that I actually do have a little speed in my legs.

If I were you I would give it a week or two at the higher mileage and then start with one speed work run per week for a couple of weeks and then build up to two. But I would also do something more like what you said above, where one of those runs would be a faster, long run - "7 miles averaging a sub 7:00 minute pace".

Of course, the honest truth is that I have no idea what I'm talking about. One thing I do know is that more speedwork will subject you to more injury risk, so we need to be careful. Of course, more speed work is so much more fun than the long slow stuff.