Two Hard Runs: Fartleks and a Long Run
>> Saturday, November 14, 2026
Last week was a big training week, and it ended with a fartlek run along River Road. I normally do TWO rounds of this in the middle of a long run. But here I just did ONE round and I tried to do it HARDER to count it as a speed day. It was efforts of 3, 2, 4, 1, and 5 minutes. Here's what I ran:
Here's the map with the minutes of each effort noted.
(Easy running 50% of each effort: hard for 3:00, easy for 1:30, hard for 2, easy for 1, etc.)
Then on Monday, I thought I'd do something different in my long run. As I've said a hundred times before, my "default" long run is about 11 miles: 2.5 miles easy, 6 miles harder, and 3+ miles as a cool-down. I've been feeling sluggish and stuck in a little rut, so I mixed that up with a QUICKER 2x10 minute effort in the middle of 11+ miles. I did a 25 minute warm-up and then got at it:
With a 2 efforts noted (split 7-11 and 13-17) with 5:00 easy running in between.
3:10, 3:05, 2:49, 0:45 (0.13) = 1.63 miles
My second one was a bit more random (as I was a bit more tried and a bit more "dying"), but I also hit 1.63 miles. I did this workout leading up to the TC 10 mile, and I covered 1.70 and 1.73 miles the last time I did it. So again, slower this time, but not horribly so. And I was happy with running harder!...
... now to just get some of my speed back...
Read more...
Posts
