I am back on the Hansons Method Half Marathon training plan, so Tuesdays are a harder effort speed training session on the treadmill because I can better control the effort levels or at least the speed. Although it was not one of those where you puke and need to lay down after each repeat, one where you can do the work and still remain upright after you get done.

Today I was planning on doing 12 x .25 @ my 5K race, but once I got going on the first quarter, I was feeling fairly good and decided to go for a half-mile to make things easier to keep track of. However, once I got to the half-mile point, I was still feeling a bit too good, so I decided to go for the full mile at race pace.

I made it.

After that, I was good and did 8 x .25 to get the 3.0 miles of harder running in that I want to do for my speedwork sessions. Although I was a bit froggy with the last quarter and did it closer to my dream goal 5K pace than I should be at this point in training.

Oh yeah, once I got done with the harder repeats, I still had a mile left before I got to 7.0 miles. Which meant that I had a choice, either finish up at a nice recovery pace or do some more speed stuff.

Of course, if you know me at all, the speed stuff won out.

I did 5 x .1 for strides at a faster for me pace. On the last one, I may or may not have run it at my all-time 5K PR pace and no, I could not run that pace for all that long, without coughing out a lung or becoming a splat spot on the wall, in back of the treadmill.

You know that test where you throw spaghetti against the wall to see if it is done…if I splat against that concrete wall off the treadmill at that speed, I am pretty damn sure that I would be done forever.

I did get to test out the Nike Zoom Fly on the treadmill at race speeds and they did great. I do have a feeling that I will need to use some different socks with them though. The bottom of the feet didn’t feel quite the way I want so I will be experimenting a little to see which ones work the best. It is amazing to me how different a pair of socks can make my shoes feel to run in.

Overall a really good run and while I didn’t follow the plan exactly, I did what I wanted, which is to work on running a bit longer at speed, my biggest weakness.