Tempo Running

My main goal last year was to finish the London Marathon last year in under 5 hours, which I succeeded in doing, just! However, seeing that many of my miles were over 11mins was a little shocking! I thought I ran consistantly at about 10min miles. Not fast, but not that slow!

My goal this year is to speed up. I know that I am never going to be a fast runner, but I know that with the right training, and improving my fitness, that I can get my body used to running faster.

I had no idea where to begin, so followed this girl's advice, that to run faster, you have to train faster. And this girl's advice to check out Runner's World for some speed work ideas. I had read on a couple of blogs about people doing 'Tempo Runs', but didn't really have any idea what they were. So I looked on runnersworld.com and came across some Tempo plans for beginners.

A tempo run, also known as a threshold run, is a faster paced session done at a 'challenging but manageable pace'. The work to improve your pace by improving your metabolic fitness. Tempo runs 'teach the body to use the ocygren for metabolism more efficiently'

A typical tempo run would begin with a warm up, followed by 'comfortably hard effort for 2-3 miles', with a cool down afterwards. 'You know your working, but you're not racing'. The longer run you're training for, the longer your tempo runs should be.

As part of my goal to speed up, I tried out the first of the tempo runs from the Runner's World article, which involved 5 X 3 minutes at tempo pace, 60-second easy jog after each one. The notes said that if you had to walk after each tempo pace, then you were going too fast.


Looks like I am a real Heel Striker here- only on my cool down!!!

So obviously, I started out too fast. I warmed up, then set the treadmill to 12kph (about 8min miles- yes I am SLOW!) After my first 3 minutes, I really wanted to walk instead of jog, so the next tempo run I turned the treadmill down to 11.3kph (8.30 min miles) and found it much more manageable.
I completed 30mins on the treadmill in total, perfect for a pre-work run.

Do you have any good speedwork/tempo workouts that you can share that will help me speed up? My goal is to eventually run a sub 2 hour half!! Not sure that's going to happen in 4 my Eastbourne half in 4 weeks, but hopefully it will happen in the next one!