Week 1, Day 1: Dog hurdling & 1st training session! 4m at 9 min/mile

Week 1, Day 1 …

Goal: 4 miles at a 9 minute/mile pace.

Actual: 4.93 miles at 8.52 minute/mile pace.

I did this run at a park local to my work in my lunch hour. Thank goodness for showers at work otherwise I’d be known as the ‘Stinky Mad Runner’ rather than just the ‘Mad Runner’ …

I set my Garmin to work out the average pace so I didn’t have to watch it too closely. The park is very hilly – I also use it as a hill training circuit as 3 laps of the park and a final downhill back to work make it just over 4 miles so it would be just about right.

I realised pretty early on that my slow runs are determined by the terrain or weather … it was actually quite difficult to stick to the 9 minute mile pace especially on a day where the weather was quite nice although the office workers walking 3 abreast on the paths slowed me down quite a bit. And the dog hurdling must have knocked a couple of seconds off as the dog walkers seemed to think that setting small dogs on runners was OK today. (I wouldn’t have minded so much but today wasn’t a speed session)                               

Came in at 8:52 minute/mile over 4.93 miles … it was a bit further back to work than I’d thought.

Garmin Info here