Back to the track, two years later

Run fast, repeat

Today's run (track): 1 mile warm-up, 1 mile intervals, 1 mile cool down (total 3.1 miles)

Unlike most weekend mornings, I woke up knowing exactly what my workout would be. I knew it had been some time since I did speed work, but it wasn't until I looked at Garmin Connect that I realized I hadn't run a full set of intervals since June 15, 2014. I've been noticeably improving my performance over the past few weeks and I figured doing repeats would be a good way to end a great week of running.

It was cool but humid when I started this morning. I did a mile warm-up at 9:53 and followed that with 10 x 110 and 4 x 125 meter sprints, separated by 30 second rest periods. I'd read that rest time for short intervals should be three times the run duration, but I was impatient. Surprisingly, my speed remained pretty consistent from start to finish, and even improved a little by the end. The other surprise was that my heart rate stayed at around 77% max while running. I would have expected it to spike a lot higher.

After I finished my speed work, I thought my cool down would feel easy. That was not the case, although it started feeling easier by lap two. I ran the last mile at 10:27 which was faster than it felt. I'd averaged 6:32 for the interval mile.

I was fortunate to be home for three days last week and got in six total workouts. I always perform better when I run with greater frequency. I'm concerned that I'll fall back to three to four workouts a week. In any case, I'm hoping I'll be able to hold the gains I've made this week.