First Interval Workout of the Year - RunLog 1-19-16

This post was written for and first appeared on One Foot In Reality.

It was just too damn cold to run outside with Bennie this morning. The temps were 9-10*F with the wind chills bringing things down around -10*F. No way I am making Bennie run in those conditions and to be honest I ain't doing it either.

Although I will give props to Mary this morning before she went to work, she did 4.0 miles outside in that stuff...so my hat is off to her and I will be the first to admit she is a LOT tougher than I am. Here I am getting wimpy in my dottage and she just keeps getting better. :-)

So since I wimped out on running outside what did I do for a work-out?

Honestly, after yesterday's 8.0 miles, I wasn't sure how the legs would feel, so I went ahead and started out easy and figured that I would go with the flow and see where it took me. About half a mile into the run, I got this wacky, crazy idea of doing quarter-mile intervals.


Hey, I haven't done any real speed work this year and I have been coasting along in maintenance mode, pretty much for a while now. The Strider's January Thaw Race is when I usually start to get a little more serious about training and well hell it was just time to blow the cobwebs and dust out.

So I did - carefully - for me.

0.75 @ 7.2 mph for a nice warm-up
0.25 @ 8.6 mph - 1.0 about an sub 7:00 pace
0.25 @ 7.2 mph
0.25 @ 8.6 mph
0.25 @ 7.2 mph
0.25 @ 8.6 mph - 2.0
0.25 @ 7.2 mph
0.25 @ 8.6 mph
0.25 @ 7.2 mph
0.25 @ 8.6 mph - 3.0
0.25 @ 7.2 mph
0.25 @ 8.6 mph
0.25 @ 7.2 mph
0.25 @ 8.6 mph - 4.0
0.25 @ 7.2 mph
0.25 @ 8.7 mph
0.25 @ 7.2 mph
0.25 @ 9.2 mph - 5.0

I was surprised at how good it felt to run faster. Nothing hurt, although the legs were a bit stiff when I started, but by the time I got going they felt pretty good. Although that last one didn't feel too great, especially that last .10 of a mile, but then again, it never feels all that good that last tenth.

It was also a good test of how the N1 Road v2's were going feel, running at faster speeds. They did great, enough so that I didn't think about the shoes at all once I got going, I was focusing more on how was carrying my hands/arms so I didn't smack them into the heart rate handles accidentally, which I did a couple of times at the faster paces and yes, it hurts.

Surprisingly I even thought about ensuring that I was using my "ass" muscles to stretch out the stride a little more than usual. mmmm that wasn't as good an idea, trying to stretch out my stride on a treadmill going at a sub 7:00 minute pace when I am not used to doing that, is like asking the treadmill to help me become a splat on the back wall behind it. Needless to say, I quickly gave up that performance enhancing thought and focused on my short stride with a faster turn-over.

Overall, it was a pretty damned decent first interval training session of the year. While I wasn't as mentally tough as I wanted to be, I still hit all of the quarters I wanted to get done and didn't really feel like crap until that last one. So it was a good sign and gave me another starting point to work from as I get ready for my spring racing schedule - whatever it turns out to be.

Honestly, I am really thinking that sticking to 5K's and then running other distances for fun is the right thing for me this year, so I will focus more on the shorter faster training stuff for a while.

Glad I finally figured that out.