The Sunday Column - Raising the tempo

Saturday morning was the first 'serious' run for myself and John. We did six miles around UCD, consisting of a single mile lap and then a five mile lap. There's no easy way to do six continuous miles around Belfield so we improvised.

The performance was not too shabby but not what I was hoping for. Of the six around four were run properly with walking breaks making up the other two. My aim was to get an extra half mile of solid running in but it's far from panic inducing.

Next Saturday is the Adidas 10 miler in the Phoenix Park. The plan is to run 6 of the 10 miles, which should be enough to beat my PB of 2 hours 19 minutes and 54 seconds. In truth I'll be looking to lob a large chunk off this time so anything less than a new best should set the panic alarm.

At present our training schedule consists of 2 kilometres of circuits, where we mix sprinting with jogging, on Tuesdays and a two mile run on Thursdays. Coupled with the longer weekend runs and races this is likely to be our schedule for the foreseeable future, possibly adding half a kilometre to Tuesdays and/or a third mile to Thursdays.

Next week's edition column will look in detail at how the 10 miler went.