Another exciting post in which I discuss running. Woohoo! Don’t worry. I’m including cute kid photos to keep everyone entertained.
Once a week I do some sort of speed work run. Today was that day. I set up the workout in my Garmin Forerunner so I would be ready to go this morning. This is one thing that makes the Garmin awesome. I can program a workout into it so that I don’t need to be paying attention to exactly where the distances are that I need to switch my speed. My plan was to do a 1 mile warm-up run. After that, I repeated this 4 times: a half mile in 4:38 (9:15/mile pace) followed by a quarter mile recovery jog. Then I set it to finish up with a 1 mile cool down jog. That’s a total of 5 miles. I also programmed the Garmin to tell me if I was below my goal pace for my half mile intervals.
It worked like a charm. When my warm-up mile was about done, my watch warned me that I would be switching gears soon. It would do that each time I switched from my fast running to recovery or to my cool down as well. Super-duper!
I got up at 5:20 and started out. I was a little apprehensive about whether I would be able to actually accomplish my goal pace. The warm-up was easy. No surprise there! Then it came time to kick it into high gear for my first half mile interval. It was hard, but I did it! I finished in 4:33. I was happy to be able to slow down for the next quarter mile. Each new interval felt harder than the last, but I pushed hard. I was also determined to do my best to hit my goal pace and to run the entire 5 miles even though I knew I would feel like falling over at the end of my last fast run. The challenging thing about speedwork like this is that you work really hard for the middle 3 miles, but you also have a mile on the front end and the back end. You need to have something left to finish that last mile.
Yes, I did feel like dying at the end of my last half mile interval, but it was for good reason! I completed my half mile intervals in 4:33, 4:30, 4:36, and 4:34. And then I finished my last recovery jog and cool down mile. I’m still a little high from the feeling of accomplishment. 
Now, how about some cute photos?
Isaac is not a full-time walker yet, but he did walk across the kitchen by himself yesterday. Crawling will be a thing of the past soon. His vocabulary is slowly growing. I heard him say, “Audrey” today. Poor Ethan. His name is harder to say. Audrey’s name sounds kind of like Daddy and Isaac says that all the time. It’s his favorite word. Speaking of vocabulary, Ethan used the phrase, “No Siree”, in a sentence yesterday. It made me laugh out loud!
wow 5:20… that’s dedication!
It sounds like that Garmin is a really handy tool. I was thinking about how nice it would have been to know if I was running too fast or too slow at the triathlon. I’m sure your next race will be awesome! By the way, when is it again? I was thinking it was Aug. 7th…
Thanks, Erica. August 7th is our next race. Two weeks from Saturday. It’s coming up quickly!
5:20 isn’t too bad once I actually get out of bed. I have to do it early if I want to beat the heat. That leaves evenings free for Nathan to run. I can’t do it while Nathan is at work unless I had a babysitter
Hey Erica … Wanna join us for the winsted 5k? it will be a lot of fun~!
I’ve been trying to get up early, but it’s hard. I feel stiff and very tired when I run in the morning. I much more enjoy running at night, even if it’s 9:00. But alas, Jeremy is gone too many evenings until after dark to make running in the evening a solution for me.
Kristen, I can’t do mornings in the winter for those same reasons. I’ll switch to evenings when it gets cold. I think I can hack the early mornings now since we have some sunlight already and I don’t have to worry about cold muscles. I really enjoy the evening running too though (so long as it’s not hot!).