I prepared myself for this one on Monday. I skipped all running and walking workouts and only went to spin to keep my legs somewhat fresh. I have less than 2 weeks until school starts again and I've been working on getting my sleep schedule back. I was actually up by 6:30 and out the door around 7:30 following multiple cups of coffee.
I have been researching track workouts for my half marathon goal pace and found this awesome article: Workout of the Week: Mile Repeats. The article touches on mile repeat workouts for 5K, 10K, half and marathon efforts which I LOVE since I often am trying to do my track workouts faster than half marathon pace.
Following a 3 mile warm-up and a stop at the grossest port-a-potty I've ever seen, I started my first repeat with the goal of 7:00 miles.
The first mile flew past with a perfect split of 7:00. I walked a 200 m rest and then started my second repeat. My Garmin was acting crazy beeping every 3 seconds with a "lap error" message on the screen. I have no idea what that was about and I also couldn't see my pace, so I ran the second repeat by feel. I ran a 6:34.
Apparently my body can go faster than my mind thinks it can.
With 2 miles down and hopefully 3-4 more, I wanted to up my pace but keep it conservative enough to finish my workout. I changed my goal pace to around 6:50 and hoped for the best. Mile 3 split: 6:49. My legs were starting to feel the workout at this point. Mile 4: 6:53, Mile 5: 6:50. I could feel that I had one or two more repeats in me. Mile 6 I really started to feel the fatigue in my quads with a split of 6:45. I felt that I could maybe pull off one more and decided that was a good place to stop. I didn't want to go for complete fatigue. I still had to make it home.
A 3 mile cool down to make it back to my front door and 4x 8-10 strides to keep my legs awake. I spent lots of time stretching and foam rolling before making my usual post-run smoothie.
There were fortunately no soccer boys this Track Tuesday, only maintenance men working on the field. Which I didn't mind until until one of them did this:
On my last mile repeat. Of course.
What is your workout today?
Are you a football fan? Running around a football field is making me miss lazy Sundays watching any and all games.
Thanks for this post!! I have mile repeats on the schedule for tonight and have been looking for a good workout to do:) I have such a love/hate relationship with mile repeats!!
ReplyDeleteI totally agree. Mile repeats are hard but I love the feeling after a hard workout! I also find that the time goes by super fast!
DeleteI think you sound disappointed that your soccer boy fans didn't show up today ha ha... Good work on the running though. They are really good splits, but like you say, it's better to stop early and not push until complete fatigue...
ReplyDeleteHa! I was definitely not disappointed. I think I prefer the equipment in the way versus teenage bodies all over the track. I am trying to listen more to my body to avoid any sort of overtraining!
DeleteThanks for sharing that mile repeat link, I'll definitely have to try out that advice. I skipped working out yesterday because I had to clean my apartment for an incoming guest. I'm a bit nervous to see what happens to my workouts this month since I essentially have friends in town all of August.
ReplyDeleteIt's definitely hard finding time to run with lots of plans and out of town guests! My friends and family understand that I must run otherwise I'm a total grump.
Delete