Making friends with pace not a pace maker

This week I am looking at pace.  To me one the great mysteries of running.  In the early days I naively thought that all you needed to do was to just go out and run.  To a large extent that is true and always will be. But what I had not counted on was that after a while 'just running' was not going to be satisfying enough for me.  I wanted to get faster and stronger and in paticular faster.

However with much of my running I spend a lot of time thinking about what I want to do but quite often very little time actually putting it into action.  This week however is different.  This week is my week for speed, well pace really.

I have built in two speed sessions , one on Thursday as part of my easy run and then one with the training group on Saturday.  Speed training is all about understanding your pace and understanding how to build up strength to run at your race pace. To do that successfully you must learn how to run for short extended periods at your race pace then dial back and run at a slightly slower pace.

There are two ways to speed train - one is laps on a track at pace race and just under, and the other is hills - running them.

The seriousness of a (semi) long distance runner...

I could just have the most understanding supervisor ever.  After nearly dying from heat stroke on Tuesday evening (I can have a sense of the dramatic on occasion) from running my 3 miles along the Atlanta Beltline which has little to no shade I realised that I needed to switch my running to the mornings if I was going to keep to my schedule, enjoy it and not die.

While I clocked my three miles in 35 minutes (included a couple of walking stretches) I know I am not going to get stronger or faster if I continue to do the majority of my training in the evening summer heat.  So my great boss TC has agreed to let me come into work a little later on Tuesday's, Wednesday's and Thursday's. This will allow me to run in the mornings and not be rushed into work overheated and hungry. Three cheers for TC please.

Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.

My sister sent me a book for my birthday this year "What I talk about when I talk about running" by Haruki Murakami.  As the title suggests it is about running.  Mr Murakami has run a marathon every year for the past 23 years and in 2008 he published a book about his meditations on his running journey.

I have not read any of his other works but I started this one last week and the phrase in the title of this blog was what jumped out at me when I read the preface.  A simple yet effective mantra that I repeated to myself several times on Saturday during my first training run for the All State half in October.  It was billed as an "easy 4 miles" and while it was not terrible, I don't know whether I would categorize it as "easy"...

Where's Lara?

Like the eponymous character in the Where's Wally? cartoons - north American readers will know him better by the name Waldo - Lara Lapin has been somewhat hidden these last six months.  Despite my signature red running face but unlike Wally's red stripy jumper hiding slyly in a crowd, I have been nowhere to be seen in any Atlanta running crowd.  My running in 2013 has been sketchy to say the least.

Where's Wally? Where's Lara more like