Double Dosage!

As I said in my previous post, today was going to be a day for a speed session and then a steady few miles later in the day. Wednesday is an excellent day for training as I get the whole afternoon off school, so I can practically train whenever and wherever I want.
Today I did my speed session before lunch. This was intentional so that I could get some good food down afterwards which would in turn hopefully aid recovery. The session consisted of 6 x 3 minutes hard with 1 minute 30 jog recovery. Obviously the idea of a speed session is to run faster than race pace and so hopefully your speed in a race gets faster. With a hill rep session due on Friday, I decided to avoid the hills and focus on the flat.
The school field was covered in melting snow and after a 10 minute warm up, my feet were soaked and it was clear the muddy, boggy quagmire of a pitch alone would make the session hard; not ideal conditions for trying to get the legs shifting!
I fought away and 1..2..3..4..5 efforts down before I knew it. By this time the 'top' was really quite slippy and I was struggling to get any grip. I noticed I was using my arms a lot more than usual as it was hard to get any power from the legs in the conditions. I gave it my all on the 6th, although much of my energy was sapped from my legs by the mud on the previous efforts. Still on reflection my paces recorded by the Garmin for the 3 minute intervals were pretty pleasing:
1.5:31 per mile
2.5:38 per mile
3.5:54 per mile
4.6:03 per mile
5.6:03 per mile
6.5:53 per mile
The first effort was possibly a little enthusiastic but there again conditions got much tougher as the session went on - my trails went straight through the surface snow and made corners more treacherous than when I first set out. Considering the conditions, I am very pleased with this session.
Onto this afternoon where I did a very steady 30 minutes to hopefully flush the legs out. It was a joy to get out and actually take in the scenery rather than having to run eyeballs out all the time! I have done around 8 miles today in total (5 in the speed session and 3 in the steady run), so not a bad day's mileage and a good bit of speed work as well.I'm looking forward to a day off tomorrow before more of the same on Friday.

P.S. Went to Tranmere (3rd away game on the trot!) for another superb Town performance and a 2-0 win. Bring on the Leeds scum on Saturday; I would love a good win to stuff in all their arrogant faces.