Speaking of the weekend, it has been a couple of days since my last post! Not too much has been going on, we spent most of the weekend working on the yard. I didn't take any before and after pictures because the before was pretty shameful and the after is just average! Not that we didn't work hard, but at this point it was mostly clean up, getting rid of fire ants and the spreading fertilizer/weed killer so hopefully things will grow well in the spring!
I had planned to run 10 miles on Sunday, but I got a bit of a late start so it was pretty warm out (TX winter does not exist, it has been 75 for the past week or so!) and then my left ankle and knee still had some nagging pain so I headed home early and just did 8.5 miles, which I still thought was pretty good the week after the marathon! My right hamstring had also been bothering me, but I think that has mostly worked itself out now.
In addition to working towards my goal of 1200 miles before by birthday in June, I'm also trying to work on my speed ahead of the 5k I am running next weekend. I haven't been trying to run fast for awhile now, so I'm hoping to gain some speed back over the next few weeks! One thing I learned last summer is that interval training is key to getting faster.
Before I started running intervals I had a really hard time running any faster than 10 min/mile - maybe sometimes 9:30 min/mile if I really focused on maintaining my pace, but my body's natural rhythm was at 10:00 it seemed.
When I started my 5k training plan last summer it included interval runs every Wednesday so instead of running the prescribed distance at a consistent pace, I would run as fast as I could for 0.25mi and then recover at a slow jog or walk for 0.15mi. Nothing special about those distances, but the training plan called for 400m (which is about 0.25mi) and the loop in my neighborhood is 0.40mi, so I figured I'd recover for the rest of the loop and then start again. You can also do time based intervals (fast run for 2 mins, recover for 1 min, for example).
Either way, the whole point is to force your body to do something uncomfortable and get away from its 'default pace'. Once I started doing intervals my other runs got faster too because my body no longer thought that running was only one speed! If that makes any sense :)
Anyway, for today's workout I did 12 repeats of the 0.25/0.15 intervals, with a 0.2 mile warm up for a total of 5 miles. That was the most repeats I have ever done, so I figured the last ones would be tough, but I was hoping to be under 7 min/mi for at least the first half! I was pleasantly surprised when I was able to do them all under 7 min/mi! I always think the charts look fun after I upload the data from my Garmin:
You can see I also wore my heart rate strap. It is not the most comfortable thing for sprints since it straps across my rib cage and makes it a bit harder to catch my breath, but I like to have the data so I can see how fast I might be able to run the 5k. Since my heart rate got up to 190 after a quarter of a mile at a 6:30 pace, I definitely can't run that fast for 3 miles! But hopefully a little slower (near 7:15 maybe?) will do the trick!
Tomorrow I need to do 5 miles again and I am not sure what my plan is for the run. I will probably try to make it a fast run since I'll take a couple of days off before running again on Sunday. Might as well wear myself out!
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