While training for the marathon in Madrid I would do no more than one session of speed training a week and if I had a race on the weekend or if I played football in the week it would be a session I would drop. My speed training in general consists of going to the track and doing repeated fast paced efforts with a jog or walk recovery in between depending on how I feel. My typical session would consist of 4x100m efforts, 4x200m and 2 or more 400m.
In the last few weeks I've been doing two or three speed sessions a week. The second type of session is done on the road and involves fast past efforts of 500m or 1000m with a jog recovery, if just 1000m efforts I do 3 or 4 efforts. You can see an example of such a session here:1000m series
I said last week I was able to run 1 kilometre in 3:25, well this week saw a step forward, I managed a kilometre in 3:20. Clearly if I keep improving at this rate my target of 3:00 is well within reach in the next few weeks. However, my track session reminded me that it will be a difficult task. Below is a table that lists for various distances up to 1km the time that 3min/km pace would lead to for that distance together with the time I currently run that distance in.
| Desired Pace | Current Times | |
| 100m | 00:18 | 00:15 |
| 200m | 00:36 | 00:33 |
| 400m | 01:12 | 01:14 |
| 500m | 01:30 | 01:37 |
| 800m | 02:24 | - |
| 1km | 03:00 | 03:20 |
As you can see, I can run at 3:00min/km pace over 100 and 200m but so far I've been unable to sustain that pace even up to 400m. If I can't sustain 3:00min/km pace for 500m it seems a huge ask to get to sustaining that pace for double that distance but that's what I'm trying to do.
It's not an impossible task, but it is a challenging one, but one that will hopefully pay dividends when I start upping my mileage later in the year ready to take on a new season of half marathons.
That's all for now,
Happy running
El Maratonero
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