Benchmark run ๐Ÿƒโ€โ™‚๏ธ

Benchmark run ๐Ÿƒโ€โ™‚๏ธ

On Sunday, I decided to start a three month half marathon training programme, to see if adding quality, reducing mileage, slowing down and generally mixing things up a bit improves my pace.

Iโ€™m following a Garmin programme and today was a five minute benchmark with 2x2 min mute warm up and cool down. The five minute effort was simply described as โ€œrun hardโ€ so I ran that segment at 7:14 pace.

Whatโ€™s interesting is that my heart rate peaked at 146 and averaged 130. But I did feel like I ran hard during the five minutes.

To me, thatโ€™s an indication that whilst my cardio performance is reasonable, I need to get the legs stronger and working much harder. So, Iโ€™m looking forward to some intervals, hills and maybe even some strength training.