Speedwork

Joy here...I've just heard from Nomi via email who says that she's been sick and hasn't been doing any running at all. So that explains why the last few entries have been rather Joy-heavy. Sorry about that. Hopefully she'll be up and at 'em (as they say) to prevent this blog from being too one-sided.

For the moment, though, you're stuck with me. Today being Tuesday was scheduled as our first day of "speedwork." I think I've mentioned before that our rough weekly training plan is as follows:

Sunday-bike ride

Monday-rest day

Tuesday-quality workout (i.e. hills or tempo or speed repeats)

Wednesday-easy recovery run

Thursday-quality workout (i.e. hills or tempo or speed repeats)

Friday-rest day

Saturday-long run.

Of course, sometimes I adjust/change/skip workouts, but at least that's the rough schema. With each "long run" I try to add distance, and then during the rest of the week, I don't worry so much about distance, and most of the runs are anywhere between 6km and 12km. Today was the first day of speed repeats. That means, we were going to run for 4 sets of 4 minutes at a speedy pace (i.e. faster than tempo). So for me, if my easy pace is around 5:50ish min/km and my tempo pace is around 4:50ish min/km, then my speed repeat pace should be around 4:20ish min/km. Ugh.

So out the door I went, slathered with sunscreen and with my water bottle strapped to my waist pack, all ready for the speedy run. It was hot, humid, muggy, and quite uncomfortable. We ran for about 30 minutes to warm up and did 3 strides in that warm up. Then the speedy parts started. The Man said "go" and then he was off like a proverbial bat outta hell, while I just did my lamaze breathing and tried to keep my pace fast but steady. At the end of 4 minutes, he was ahead of me, and we had a really slow 3 minute jog break before the next 4 minutes; again, he was off like a dart, and I just kept up with my speedy pace some 10 steps behind him. My Garmin beeps at the 2min mark to tell me I'm 50% done the speedy section, and let me tell you, those are some LONG TWO MINUTES. It seems like I've been running for a gillion years by the time I hear the mid-way beep, and then it's another gillion years before I hear the final beep. Again, we get a slow 3 minute jog break before the next 4 minutes of speediness. I can only handle drinking during the 3 minute jog break, because it honestly takes all my mental and physical concentration to last those 4 minutes at such a speedy pace. Once I've swilled some water to try to make up for the buckets I was sweating, we started our 3rd set of 4 minutes of speedy. Again, The Man takes off, but at 2:63min. he pulls off to a walk, and as I pass him, I just barely hear him mutter through his gasps "just keep going if you can." And my pace is solid and steady (thanks to my heavy lamaze breathing that's not only keeping me from hyperventilating, but helping me count out a steady and hard pace) so I continue on until the end of the 4 minutes. Then during our 3 minute slow jog, he takes his time to catch up to me before we start our final 4 minutes. This time, he's not so speedy and we both just run a total of 3 minutes at our speedy pace before calling it quits and jogging a bit to catch our breath and swill some water, before we just decide to walk the rest of the way home. So all-in-all, even though it hurt like you wouldn't believe, I think that my first experience of speed repeats wasn't an utter failure.

Here are today's run stats:

Warm up: 30 minutes easy with 3 strides

Speed Repeats:

#1 - 4mins for an average pace of 4:19min/km

#2 - 4mins for an average pace of 4:28min/km

#3 - 4mins for an average pace of 4:30min/km

#4 - 3mins for an average pace of 4:38min/km

Cool down: 10 minutes easy and then walking the rest of the way home

Obviously, if the plan for the speed repeats is to have our pace around 4:20ish min/km then we have some work to do since the last two were a little slower than ideal, but for a first try with this kind of workout, it wasn't a total wash.

We'll try more speedwork next Tuesday, and don't be surprised if you hear shouts of "¡Ándale! ¡Ándale! ¡Arriba! ¡Arriba!" coming from the Rideau Canal here in Ottawa.