Fartlek fun

Managed to squeeze my run into one of the few periods today when there wasn't a hail blizzard; in fact the weather could almost be classed as rather nice! My planned run, nicked from the RW sub-4.30 plan (more anon) was a 4 mile Fartlek divided into 1M jog, 2M Fartlek, 1M jog.  The first mile was fine, and I rather enjoyed the fartlek bit even if I did kinda over-do it a few times and have to have recovery walks rather than jogs.  The only real reason I cut off the last 1M jog in the end was that I had reached Morrisons and wanted to pick up a few items that I forgot on my shop on Friday. 

Now from what I've understood - fartlek is supposed to be 'speed play'(?); I'm sure the accumulated knowledge of the GRW will correct me if I'm wrong! What I was aiming for was briefish bursts of speed - either between two points, or sometimes when there was a string of lampposts, accelerating at every lamppost for a given number of posts.  I have no idea if this was technically the right way of going about it, but it was actually quite fun!

Knee was generally behaving: it made it's presence known a few times (mostly when flying downhill) but wasn't really painful - was also trying to keep an eye on my technique and see if I could work out what was making it say "oi" when it did - so hopefully I can keep that up on my next planned run and stay injury free.

Have tried to incorporate some of the speed work from the sub-4.30 plan into my marathon plan (although got a bit confused with my weeks when doing it).  I'm not actually planning to TRY to hit the sub-4.30 pace as I think that's rather too far ahead of where I am at the moment. However, I thought if I could take some of the speedwork/hill work exercises and maybe do walking recoveries etc on those runs if I feel too pushed, then I MIGHT break 5 hours?

Stats from Garmin site here (although I'm pretty sure I never did in fact manage 1.38 min/mile pace at any point!!!)

Fingers crossed anyway!