Week of August 1

This week was a good running week!! I basically ran the whole week on pavement/road for the first time since training started. Earlier, my legs used to hurt around the shins due to the hard road surface, but surprisingly, there has been no pain this week. I also made it a point to run harder this week, trying to get a 10min/mile time for all short runs. I was somewhat successful!!! But I missed track training this week, so will have to push that to the next week.
Trying for the 10min/mile target seems to have paid off. Today's 12 mile run was good, really good! I did the first 8 miles with quite a brisk pace, finishing the 8th mile after exactly 82 minutes. However that had an adverse effect on the last 4, where I became slightly slower. The last mile was particularly taxing, and actually seemed 3 miles long!:D:D I eventually got a 5 mins improvement on my first 12 mile run, finishing in 2 hours and 5 mins this time.
A little about the track training:
I start out with a mile run as warmup. This is followed by a mile of "Strides". Strides basically consist of speeding up and slowing down at fixed intervals. Running on the track makes this easier, as I simply speed up on the straight portions of the track, and slow down on the curves portions. So each lap would be 2 sets of strides. So a mile is 4 laps this way.
This is followed by timed runs, in my case 2X800 last time, seperated by a slow lap for recovery. This is particularly tiring!:D:D
The workout then ends with a mile of "cooling down"!!
The track workouts are supposed to build my speed reserve, i.e. increase my ability to run faster! This seems to be working, since my long runs have been getting better!!
Next sunday is my first 13 miler - will be running the half marathon distance for the first time!!