No need for speed

So, on with the training. I'm following a Smartcoach training programme for the half-marathon. I'm pretty good at sticking to training schedules, except for the Smartcoach pacing, which even to me seems very slow. I know, slow is (sometimes) good. But nearly 12-minute miles for easy and long runs feels almost unbearably slow.

I know running slow(er) is important for building endurance and kind of even know why. I even know this from my own experience - reducing the pace enables me to run much further. But despite knowing it, I still don't quite feel it. I still feel that every run at every distance should ideally be faster than the last run at that distance. I know this is stupid.

Anyway, yesterdays' scheduled run was so-called speedwork, which seems an ironic name given my slowness. Smartcoach called for 5 miles including 2 x 1600m (that's a mile, near enough - I have no idea why they mix miles and metres in this way. It just confuses me) at 9:39 pace. That's not fast. I thought I should manage it. Excitingly, this was only my second outdoor run (snow came back to haunt us for a couple of days) using my thrilling new toy, the Garmin Forerunner 405. For the uninitiated, this is an amazing gadget which enables you to track pace, distance and even exact location using GPS technology, and then upload it to your computer for happy hours of geekdom. Well, nearly exact location. Poring over the map of my route afterwards, I noticed that I was apparently running through hedges and over the tops of houses, which I'm fairly sure I wasn't. But, you know, it was close enough.

Now, I know there are ways of inserting Garmin data into the blog (I've seen it on loads of other blogs, so you can definitely do it). But I've never done it. Hang on....



I think that kind of worked, though I didn't mean to show the whole thing, and it's better on satellite than map, as I was running along the old railway line which isn't actually marked on the map. Clicking on satellite and zooming in on the red line will, however, show me running over the tops of houses on the outward journey, although, weirdly, along the path on the return leg. Definitely need to work on figuring this out a bit more.

Let's try splits.

1 10:14
2 8:58
3 9:39
4 9:59
5 9:23

Total: 48:14 (Avg pace 9:41)

As you can see, I did the second mile much faster than scheduled - this was partly due to not having quite figured out the settings on the Garmin. I had it set to auto scroll, which meant I had to keep looking back at my watch until the screen showing pace came round again, which made it difficult to monitor. Next time, I'll set the scrolling to off. Anyway, that mile actually felt pretty easy, but predictably enough I was then knackered and never again achieved the dizzy heights of 8:58/mile or indeed follow the scheduled pacings.

Run was actually, at 4.98 miles, just short of the planned 5, not that it matters. I would have carried on past my house purely in order to hear the beep on my Garmin and have a nice round 5-mile time, but when I reached home I noticed that my son's girlfriend was sitting outside in her car waiting for him (I don't know why he doesn't allow the poor girl into the house) and I was too embarrassed to run past her up the road for a few seconds and immediately turn back, as that would have made me look like an insane person, not to mention a beetroot-faced and sweating one, so 4.98 miles it was.