Fartlek around the Yarra 11.6 km

Finally, I got a run in today. The run that was meant to be done yesterday. Straight after work at 4.30 pm I was stretching in Fawkner Park. I still hadn't made my mind up about how far, I was tossing up betwen an 8 k'er or 15 k'er fartlek style. I headed off and more or less decided whilst still in Fawkner Park that I'd split the difference and run about 11 km along the Yarra. I was quite happy with the run. The plan was to run the first km easy followed by a quickish km and continue that pattern all the way around. The splits for the easy k's were around 4:50 - 5:00 /km and the fast k's were around the 4:10 /km mark. As it turned out the last fast km (#9) incorporated the Anderson Street Hill (the going up bit), even so that particular split came in at 4:35 /km so I was happy with that. It's been a while since I last ran a proper fartlek session. On the one hand they are hard and gruelling and yet on the other hand I really appreciate the slow/easy laps as they help me gather my thoughts and prepare for the next fast lap. My mental approach with the fast laps (km's) is that I must maintain the pace which means I get to the slow km quicker and then be recovering earlier for the next fast lap. I'm wondering if that makes sense, well it does to me. Overall I ran 11.6 km in a time of 55:13 for an average pace of 4:45 /km. As expected my max/avg heart rates were 171/150 higher than a normal even paced run. Details of tonight's run can be found here at Motionbased.

Stats as of 27 Apr 2006 Today : 11:6 Prev 7 Days : 48.9 Prev 28 Days : 124.3 April 2006 : 124.3 YTD : 883.1 Monthly Avg : 220.8 Weekly Avg : 49.1 Total (since 2001) : 8624.2