Week 2, Day 5: Mud, 5 Mile Fartleks and Running like a Labrador

Paris Marathon Training: Week 2, Day 5

Session: 5 mile fartlek

Actual: 6.02 miles fartlek (overestimated the distance gained running in circles)

I wasn’t sure what to do on a Fartlek session so did a bit of sneaky research. Apparently the term Fartlek is Swedish for ‘speed play’ and simply means changing the speeds up and down and having a bit of fun. According to Wikipedia it’s unstructured training with changing intensities and speeds.

I already knew someone else who ran this way … Oscar! So I decided to approach this run the same way that my sister’s Labrador approaches a run. He sprints for a bit when he sees a rabbit, runs around in circles, stops for a breather, has a bit of a jog and then does it all over again. Basically he has a fantastic time and gets some running done at the same time.

It’s been very windy and a bit flooded around here recently so I thought there might be a bit of an issue with mud. I also took my little Sis out for a run as she got a Garmin for Christmas and was desperate to try it out. Well … she wanted to try it out. In all fairness to her she came out with me through all of the mud, rain and flooded lanes and hardly complained at all. Although there was some muttering and muffled swearing going on at some of the muddier parts …

The first obstacle was the upper lane was completely flooded for about 25 feet. I couldn’t persuade little Sis to run through it so we hopped up onto the bank and navigated the mud … thank goodness it was a Fartlek run not a speed session!

I tried but couldn't persuade little Sis to run through it. I've taken the pic having run through it confident of being within 5 minutes of home and a hot shower!

It was raining pretty steadily but it eased off after a mile or so. My sister was running at 10 - 11 min/mile so I ran on ahead for some of the speedier sections and doubled back in circles so we could run together.

It was actually a really fun session. There wasn’t a specific structure to it so I ran up some of the hills and used the downhills for recoveries or ran down the hills as fast as I could. It was great. If only someone could hoover up the mud too …

Me enjoying the fact I was on a solid surface again!

The sheer amounts of mud and water coming down off of some of the hills meant that we were running slower than I wanted to on some of the tracks, but it was nice knowing that I could work the intervals around the terrain rather than having to increase or decrease speed at a time or distance marker.

The view back down the hill into Milborne Wick

Navigating the muddier sections ... definitiely one of the slower intervals!

The final hill!!

 

Summary:

Distance: 6.02 miles
Time: 1:08:02
Avg Pace: 11:19 min/mi
Best Pace: 4:30 min/mi

Garmin Info Here