My week in Trondheim was a rousing success for my running, but not so much for my cross-training.  The hotel I was staying at did indeed have a “fitness room”, if that’s what you can call a windowless box stuck in the bottom corner of the building’s basement.  Not exactly an inspiring place to spend a few hours of your life, right?  Ah well.  Even so, I’m pretty satisfied with the progress I’ve made in my speed training.  Here’s how it went…

• Monday: Rest.
• Tuesday, rest:  Was completely exhausted and went straight to bed as soon as I got home from work.
• Wednesday, speed training:  Planned 10-minute warm-up, 3 x 1600 meters @ 8:38, 10-minute cool-down. Using my Garmin to measure distance instead of a track, I did a 12-minute w/u, 2 x 1600m at 8:57 and 8:35, 1 x 800m at 4:33, and 11-minute c/d. Okay, not exactly according to plan. For the second 1600m, I just wanted to see how fast I could go. But by the third go-round, I cramped up and had to call it quits after 800m.  In any case, I wasn’t expecting to hit 8:38 at all, so I’m kinda pleased about that. Now if I could just do it 3 times in a row!
• Thursday, cross-training: Did a 15-minute Nike Training Club core workout, and I’m still a little sore!
• Friday, tempo run: Plan was to do a “mid-tempo” run of 5 miles at a 9:40 pace, which is about 15 seconds slower pace than my “short-tempo” run last week. And I nailed it: 9:37, 9:34, 9:37, 9:36, 9:33. Felt pretty easy at the beginning and a bit harder towards the end, but overall pretty good. I think I’m gradually getting closer to the paces listed for my workouts in the Run Less, Run Faster book (which for this workout was 9:26).
• Saturday, rest: Spent the whole day in the train.

• Sunday, long run: Hit 8-miles today in 1:28:30, running three times around the Sognsvann lake plus some extra.  Nice to finally see the path completely free of ice.  I’m starting to get a picture of how beautiful it must be in the summer!

I’m curious to see how my training goes next week once I start transitioning back into life in Germany, but I’m really looking forward to it.  And good luck to everyone running in Eugene and DC today!

More posts about training for the Hamburg Half:

• Hamburg Half: Weeks 2 and 3
• Hamburg Half: Week 1
• Running in 2012 and 2013