Mixing it up

I set out with the intention of going to Skipton Woods yesterday and hitting out a really hard session. This would consist of an 8 minute warm up, followed by 14 x 2 minute reps with 1 minute jog recovery followed by a 10 minute warm down. The Garmin didn't have any juice in however and after my first effort switched itself off. This meant I had no awareness of how long I would be running for whatsoever.
I decided to vary my efforts from long to short and just run the recovery as I felt appropriate. I picked landmarks in the woods, for example running from a bench to a bridge. It worked very well and it was a very good session - I felt incredibly strong. To hazard a guess, I would say the longest effort was around 3 minutes and the shortest around 30 seconds. In reality it was more of a Fartlek session but a very good one at that. Skipton Woods is good firm forest tracks and I felt to be flying even over the stiff climbs I snuck into various efforts.
I worked out that altogether I did 12 efforts so not too far short of the planned 14 and altogether I was out for 49 minutes (8 min W/U, 31 mins, 10 min W/D). A good day's training and it was very enjoyable mixing it up rather than the normal repetitive nature of these sessions. Role on Sunday where I may mix it up again with a hard mile followed by an easy mile rather than the normal continuous long run! This may be particularly beneficial as I feel my weakness is in speed endurance; I have the speed as well as endurance for a slow pace but not for keeping up a continuous fast pace - Just like I faded in the final third on Wednesday as I failed to live up to the 12.30 ish pace I had set in the first half of the race. Hopefully Sunday will be a start to countering this weakness.