Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Do plans work?

After last Saturday's successful long run, I thought I might need to do more planning in my runs. With that in mind, I did an interval run on the treadmill after work last night. I had planned to run outside, but I ended up inside after some issues with my contact lens. I made the most of it.

I finished 5 miles in 50 minutes, but the glory is in the intervals. The first and last miles were slow - like just under 11 minutes each. The middle miles were quarter-mile intervals where the recovery periods were 5.5 mph (10:54 pace). I think I did one interval at 8.0 (so fast for me).

Now I'm not sure what my plan should be for Wednesday night's run. I read conflicting things about the percentage of runs that should be "easy" runs and then that if you only run 3-4 times a week, no run should be "junk." I thought about doing a true tempo run, but I struggle with the cooldown mile (I did last night, too - the last mile was probably 10:30 instead of 11). And when you're running with a group, it's hard to slow down and cut away.

I guess I'll just wing it like I usually do. But maybe, just maybe, I'll do a true tempo run - warmup and cooldown miles with race-pace miles in between. Maybe.

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