That was hard.
With having so many halves close together, I have big hopes for one of them. The marathon gave me a little (giant) kick in the ass. With that being said, I need to get said ass in gear and that means training. Training means speed work. So I busted out my Nike’s and waded into the shallow end tonight.
I headed to the lake path after work, I can’t even remember the last time I ran there. I know I am still feeling a little sluggish and with mountains of smoke in the air, I knew it wasn’t going to be a walk in the park. I still have all my Hanson’s workouts saved in my watch so I figured I would just use the one for 400 repeats. I knew there was no way I was doing 12 of them like programmed but that’s what the lap button’s for right? I was hoping for between 4-8 repeats.
It was my first time wearing my Nike’s since May, I stopped doing speed work once my shins went to hell. I kept my warm up of 1.25 miles nice and easy, plenty of walking. 😛 Now, I haven’t raced a 5K since September 2015 so I have no idea what an accurate pace should be so I was optimistically aiming for an 8:45 average for the repeats.
#1- woah, this awkward, my legs are confused. How do you run this fast? How the hell long is 400m anyways? Oh good, the watch buzzed. Recovery time.
Full disclosure- I walked all the recoveries. My lungs were a little pissed I was making them work this hard with all the smoke in the air. My watch buzzed for my next run and wait what? It said cool down mile and repeated 12 times. WTH? So I stopped my watch and started a new run. From there on I ran by watching my watch and trying not to fall on my face at the same time.
#2- all right, feeling pretty good, maybe I can do 8
#3- Ok, this is getting harder, that last thought was a pipe dream. Can I quit now?
#4- Yeah, smoke sucks. Damn my legs are tired, how long is 400m again? This is my last one. Let’s not go crazy right?
All in all, 3.76 miles. And the intervals?
Distance | Elapsed Time | Average Pace |
.25 | 2:04 | 8:23 |
.25 | 2:10 | 8:48 |
.25 | 2:01 | 8:01 |
.25 | 2:03 | 8:07 |
I think I am more surprised that I kept the last 3 intervals at .25. How did I do that? And the intervals are too fast which might explain why I was huffing and puffing so much. Also, I don’t get the variance in pace between interval 1 and 4. They are only 1 second different. Is my watch crazy?
It wasn’t a lot but it felt pretty good. Now hopefully I can move on Thursday. 😛
And the county is on fire, the air is full of smoke, the lake is almost dry and yet I rounded a curve to see more green than I have in months. What gives?
Is my watch crazy?
How is your weather?