Weekly roundup

I didn't manage my long run this week (supposed to be 7 miles), but I did do a good 6 mile tempo run, well above target pace, and a 3.5 mile run in bare feet, followed by a PB at the park run this morning of around 26.40 minutes (waiting for the official time to come in).

I'm beginning to notice that my speed is picking up again.  I knew that learning to run in minimalist footwear or bare feet would mean a significant loss of speed for a fair amount of time, and I'd sort of forgotten that I actually can run at a decent speed (decent to me, if not to anyone else!).  But it was only really today that I've hit (and possibly even improved upon) my old targets.  My form has changed significantly - it's been a long time since I've suffered with those awful shin splints I used to get on every single run, and even my joints and muscles don't seem to suffer in the same way.  In the past, I've put this down to the slower speeds, and more gentle footfall.  Now I can see that my new form (which feels completely natural to me now) is starting to reap benefits, and with the pace picking up, I'm feeling better than ever.

Happy days :)

Speed

Today I did a tempo run in my Merrells.  I uploaded the workout to my Garmin before I left, so it was all programmed in:  1 mile warm up, 4 miles at 9.33 min/mile, 1 mile cool down.

My Garmin shows me an average pace for the entire run.  I always run slowly at the start as it seems to take a while for my joints and feet to warm up, so by the end of the first mile, the average pace was showing around 10.20 min/mile.  When the Garmin beeped to warn me to get ready for the middle 4 tempo miles, I checked my watch, still slower than 10 min/mile, so I sped up.  The Garmin quickly beeped to say I was in the 9.33 min/mile zone, and then shortly after beeped again to tell me to slow down.

This seemed odd, as I didn't feel I was going much faster than at the end of my warm up mile.  I didn't trust my watch.  I felt I wasn't pushing hard enough, so I ignored the irritating beeps until they gave up on me, and I just kept running at a comfortably fast pace.

When I got home, my watch told me that I had done the middle 4 at 9.14 min/mile!  This is significantly faster than the target pace, and makes me wonder if my form is beginning to show signs of speeding up without too much effort.  So far in my barefoot/minimalist running story I have found it difficult to run anywhere near as fast as I could have in trainers.  That (and the lack of structured training) have kept my pace pretty slow, though speed is not really of concern to me.

It was interesting to run today and feel like I could probably go faster than that, and maintain it, at least for a 10k if no more.  I did enjoy reading an article about adding speed to your barefoot running from Barefoot Beginner which came up on my Twitter feed a few days ago, and I even had a go at copying the video drill.  I thought about that whilst I was running, trying to replicate pulling up my feet from the hamstrings and keeping my ankle in line with my knee.  Maybe that has something to do with it.

Fartleks

Over the past few months I've been working hard to build my form, improve my muscles and bone density, and generally develop my barefoot and minimalist running skills.  But as is the peril of many runners across the globe, there's always that need to do a little bit more - to improve on what's already there.

So now I want to start improving my speed.  I suppose I feel that if I don't push this aspect, I'll never improve my distance or my overall stamina, because I'm a great believer in the notion that if I'm concentrating on one particular element of my running, a lot of other elements improve without me noticing.  So far, I've concentrated on technique and I'm hoping that if I now concentrate on speed, the technique stuff will just fall into place without me thinking about it.

Today I went out - just for a short 2 miles as time was limited - and did some Fartlek work - running slowly followed by bursts of speed.  I wore my Garmin, and hit the lap button at every changeover, but I didn't set a goal pace, I just ran hard for 150 - 250 metres, then ran slow until I'd got my breath back for the next burst.

When I first took up running (shod), I followed pretty much the same pattern. Once I felt I'd got to grips with getting out the house and running for 3 miles or so without dying, I started to build in a variety of sessions - Fartleks, hill work, speed work and tempo runs.  It was only at that point that my running really improved.  Switching to barefoot and minimalist running took me back to those early running days, and now I've grasped the basics, I feel the need to do a bit more.

How did I get on?  Overall, I hit an average pace of 8.56 minute miles.  This is great because it means I should be able to hit my previous shod distance PBs with a bit of training.  In the short speedier bursts I managed to hit speeds of 8.05 minute miles - 8.30 minute miles.  Granted, these were really short distances, but the fact that my legs will move this quickly is great - it's something I've wondered about as my cadence has increased dramatically and I wasn't sure I'd be able to move my legs fast enough to get the speed.

What I need to do now is increase the speedy sections to up to 0.5 miles, so I think perhaps it's time to plug some training plans into my Garmin and push myself properly.  Doing this completely barefoot will need to wait until warmer days, I think winter training will be minimalist, with barefoot easy runs thrown in for good measure, and barefoot training will be a Spring challenge.