There’s a few good essential things to remember when doing interval training: do your intervals at the correct pace, don’t go out too hard on your first interval and keep them consistent, focus on your form and running tall, and remember your watch.

I had forgotten the last of these pieces of advice when the time came to do the 7x800m at 6:37 minutes per mile that my training plan called for. Not only could I not measure how far I’d run but I couldn’t time how long each rep was taking. A good excuse to skip the prescribed session and plod through four miles instead or a challenge for my ingenuity? I chose the latter.

Using the Route Planner on GoodRunGuide.com revealed that Blackfriars Bridge (close to the start of my run) and Waterloo Bridge on the north side of the Thames are just over half a mile apart. And if you start from the bottom of the slope that goes up from the Embankment to Blackfriars Bridge, it’s pretty much bang on 800m.

Problem one was solved, I had 800m of flat to run up and down. Having a visual marker of how far I had to run in the distance actually worked pretty well for pacing each intervals. Although the big red coach that was marking the Blackfriars Bridge finish point threw me a curve ball by driving off half way through the session.

By the magic of being able to count up to 90, I could also estimate my 90 second recovery intervals pretty well. But how fast should I be running? Running with a Garmin I could glance down at my pace and check that it was around 6:37. A simple stopwatch would have allowed me to time each interval which should have been taking around 3 minutes 18 seconds to do. But I had neither. I tried counting as I ran along but this didn’t go too well.

Instead I ran by feel. The pace I was aiming for was somewhere between 5k and 10k pace, and I know how that should feel: not pleasant but achievable. So that’s what I did. Given how long the overall session took, and the fact that I managed to finish all 7 intervals but not wanting to do another, I’d say this method went pretty well. But next time I’ll remember my watch.