Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Return to Speedwork

I can't decide how I want to track my "training." I want to improve, and I think writing things down will help. Right now, I have Garmin Connect, a Google spreadsheet, this little space and a Google doc. WTH?! Too much.

Anyhow, I thought I'd try quarter-mile repeats last night. I haven't really done them since last summer, and I haven't tried to run an 8-minute pace since then either. I looked at the last ones, and I had one where I did 6 repeats and recovered a quarter jogging and then I did one where I did 12 repeats and recovered a tenth walking.

Both of those were done better than last night's, but I did them. I started with one mile with a friend, and then we met up with Aaron. So I ended up with a 2-mile warmup, and then I moved into the repeats. I did six of them with quarter-mile jogging recovery. I averaged 8:01 pace for the repeats (I was hoping for sub-8/under 2 minutes), but the last one was a STRUGGLE. It was 2:05, I think, so way off pace. I cooled down for a mile. Overall, I had six miles around 59 minutes.

I had a lot of trouble knowing what the pace was. My watch was constantly beeping -- speed up, in desired zone, speed up -- but the third, fourth and fifth repeats were better in that respect. The sixth one, though. I kept thinking that my watch wasn't working properly because I felt like I was sprinting and the watch was saying I was way off pace. Maybe there was a delay, but it was mostly my lack of fitness.

I'm not sure what this tells me, though. I'm thinking I'll do half-mile repeats next week and then quarter-mile again the week after. We'll see. I haven't been very good about consistently doing speedwork.

As to how speedwork fits in, this is my general plan for the near future: 1 speed workout, 1 trail run, 1 long run, 3 easy runs. Six days/week. Myrtl routine daily. Strength workout paired with two of those easy runs. Hahahahahaha. Strength.

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