To date, following the Tuesday night Katy Fit schedule has been hit or miss. During the five "hill weeks", I did one hill workout. Now speed work has started and I missed last Tuesday's 8x30/30. Understand, I haven't been skipping Tuesdays, I've just been doing easy miles instead of the prescribed quality workouts.
Tonight, I wanted to get back on track and do the prescribed workout. The schedule called for 10x30/30 with warmup and cooldown. Not wanting to "jump ahead", I decided to do last Tuesday's 8x30/30 workout.
DS had his first football game (actually it was a scrimmage) so by the time I got home after that, it was pretty late. DW encouraged me to go run as I was seriously considering skipping out. I've been on call Monday and today and I hate to drive over to a venue, get laced up, start stretching, and then get paged. But, I rolled the dice and made my way over to Memorial around 8. I just pulled into the parking lot and guess what? Beep, beep, beep, beep... So, I called the help desk to see what was going on and it ended up being something that required my attention. Drats!!! I went over to Starbuck's, logged in, and attended to the issue. By this time, it was about 8:45. Do I just go home (it was getting to be my bed time) or try again. I tried again.
After some good stretching and thinking about my game plan, I set out on my warmup mile. Don't ask how I came up with this plan but I wanted to do a 13:30 warmup mile, then the 8x30/30's, then a 14:30 cooldown .75, and a .25 walk. This plan was executed perfectly. My pacing was right on. Of course, it's easy when you have markers every .25 miles. But my first .25 on the warmup was EXACTLY 3:23. My .5 time was exactly 6:45 and I ended my mile at 13:27. This was a fun exercise. I then did some stretching and executed 8 30/30's. No measurements or stats. I just set my timer to 30 seconds and let it repeat 16 times. The toal distance by the time I finished was ~2.5 laps. So, not blazing by any means. Still, it felt good and the 30 seconds was a safe and comfortable (well slightly uncomfortable) interval. I'd say I was ~90% of an allout, running from the bad guys, sprint.
After walking the remaining 1/2 lap and then back to the 0 mile marker, I completed my .75 miles at exactly 14:30 pace. It was pretty fun to target a pace and then to see by my watch at each .25 that I was right on. Just exactly 1 minute slower than the warmup.
This is what I put in the log:
Total distance - 2.38 miles
Warmup - 1 mile - 13:30
8 x 30/30 - .63 miles - 8 minutes
Cooldown - .75 miles - 10:53 (14:30 pace)
Walk - .25 miles
God bless!!!
5 comments:
It's easy to just forget the workout when life gets in the way. Good for you for getting your run in anyway! And, great job on your pacing!
We need to find you a well-paying 8-5 kinda job so it doesn't interfere with your running.
Before I read what you did, I was thinking "I would've just done 8 30x30's, not 10"...so good job! That's how you avoid injury.
Someone asked me the other day how I manage to always end my workouts exactly at 30:00 or 40:00, etc. Uh...'cause I stop my watch at that time and then walk the rest the way to the door....LOL!
Nice workout....just back off of the " 90% all out sprint " to a slightly faster than 5K race pace. ( more later )
I have to make a comment about Barbara's comment. When I actually start using my watch in October I have a little quirk to finish all my runs in full minutes. I may finish in 39:23 and log the actual time in my log book but I will have actually continued until I hit 40 even. If it's 40:35 I will continue to 41. I sometimes get strange looks doing laps around a cul-de-sac to run an extra 20 seconds.
Hmm...my last comment didn't show up, so I'll try again...
Great job! Hitting exactly the right pace is never easy, especially when something temporarily distracts you from your workout. Way to get 'er done!
Erin
LOL Bill! I do the same thing. I really like to end at 30:00 or 40:00 but if not then, my second choice is 35:00 or 45:00. A distant third choice is 31:00, 32:00, 33:00, etc.
But never, ever something that ends in 23 seconds during the mid-week runs. I drive myself crazy, so I can only imagine how anyone else around me puts up with it....
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