I came in at 20:56. That's nearly two and a half minutes faster than last week!
I'm very happy with that, especially pulling within 60 seconds of my goal (sub 20:00 by the end of the series). But unfortunately, most of that improvement comes from running on the open hard-packed sand of the low tide course as opposed to dodging through the crowd in the loose sand of the high tide course. So this leap was a free one. The next seconds I shave off are going to take some hard work.
To that end, I've started puttting together a speed training plan. I've found a perfect spot at nearby North Harbour Stadium that has some grassy soccer fields for running sprints and 400ish repeats, some stairs for doing bounding training, and a bike track around the outside of the stadium that measures about 1100 meters.
I took a run over today at lunchtime to give it a try. I pulled some repeat times off McMillan Running's pace calculator based on my 20:56 from last night. That gave me an 1100m repeat time of 4:24 to 4:42 (4:00/k). My race pace worked out to 4:11s, so that seemed reasonable.
I ran two of those at lunchtime to see how they felt. I did the first in 4:17, and the second at 4:29. It was hard, but not gut wrenching, so I think a set of five of those will definitely be one workout a week, probably Friday's. Next I'll give some 400 repeats a try.
My next milestone goal is to beat the Under-13 leader (20:08 last night). I know marathon training has worn away all my speed, but it's still crazy to see little knee-high 10 year olds running barefoot and pulling away from me. ;-)
| Week | Time | Place | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | 23:21 | 22nd | High tide course - loose sand, 3 laps. |
| 3 | 20:56 | 28th | Low tide course - perfect weather. |
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