Today was extremely hard. I heard my alarm at 5:45 and immediately hit snooze. Fortunately, I had set another alarm at 5:50 in order to get my run out of the way this morning. What got me out of bed was the thought of my coworker who is attending boot camp classes at 5:30 a.m. I said to myself: "Karen has already been working out for 20 minutes, I have to get moving." This is my super competitive nature coming out and so I forced contacts into my eyeballs and drove over to my aunt's house.
I would've have run outside today, but the 10K training schedule called for fartleks, which is some fancy Swedish name for interval training. It was a sum total of 50 minutes with a 10 minute warm-up and cool-down period. I read that the warm-up and cool-down was very important to prevent injury. The in between is what kicked my ass. I had to run my hardest for 2 minutes, then run easy for 2.5 minutes, which meant running at a speed where I'm not gasping for air. Then run for three minutes, 2.5 minute easy. So essentially, the workout is: 2,3,4,4,3,2; with 2.5 minute easy runs in between.
Running at top speed, which for me is between 6-7 mph, (Remember, I'm a really slow runner) is extremely tiring at 6 a.m. I don't know that it would have been any easier later in the day or with more food, water, etc. In fact, my long run on Sunday for 45 straight minutes was easier than this today. Supposedly, this interval training helps increase speed, which for my legs' sake, I hope is true.
Ray, I hope you've done something today, even if that something is thinking about running. I'm about to fall asleep at my desk and it's only 9:00 a.m. I feel like I've been up for days. Thank goodness tomorrow is a rest day.
Comment from my tech illiterate sister, Ray, who is going to run the marathon next year with me:
ReplyDeleteOk I've been trying to post a comment on your blog but this is one of the hardest things I've ever had to do....so here is my comment to your post...through email:
Ok here are my results (drum roll please)
ba da da da da da da (that is a drum roll...dont steal it! It's copyrighted!)
And to be annoyingly anticlimatical I cannot just tell you my results I have to explain them to you, because I don't really know what they are.
I ran 2.2 miles yesterday!! YAY! I was multitasking because I had to sign the back of my old car's title at Toyota, which conveniently happens to be located 1.1 miles away from where I work. So a perfect opportunity to kill two birds with one stone (haha reference here for Bobby:) So I looked at the clock before I left (11:57 am), and planned to look at the clock when I got to Toyota and when I left Toyota, and when I got back to the lab (12:24). But when I got to Toyota, i forgot to look at the time. I could have been there anywhere from 2-5 minutes which means I run anywhere between 5.3 mph to 5.99 mph depending really roughly on my estimation on the time I spent at Toyota.
But then I park 1.1 miles away from work, so this morning I ran to work and set my phone stopwatch when I began running. But I forgot to look on my phone when I got to work and also took a slight detour ( by accident, it was a retarded run path) making the run 1.2 miles (according to google maps). I remembered to check my phone when I went to the bathroom and it read 13:46. So....maybe it was really any where from 12:00 to 13:00 making this morning's run time (which I almost gave up and walked for like 20 seconds but I stopped that and ran the rest! I had to be honest though so there it is) anywhere from 5.54mph to 6.0mph.
My legs and stomach feel very sore. I am running with you on Sunday though! Thanks for motivating me. I haven't run in a long long long looooooooooooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnngggggggggggggg time.
Love ya!