« Catching Up | Main | When it Rains it Pours »
November 10, 2006
Mark This Day
Um...when was the last time it was 70 degrees and sunny on November 10th in Pittsburgh, PA? Absolutely amazing weather today! I kept thinking that I could literally take this weather 365 days of the year, for all the years of my life. It was perfect - sunny and 70 and not humid. If there was a place that existed with weather like this year round that still had the same cost of living as Pittsburgh...well...that place would be so over-crowded I probably wouldn't want to live there anyway. So there!
Regardless, I was majorly chomping at the bit to get out of work today and get some outside time. Luckily I went in early and was able to leave early. And the weather did not disappoint. I did a track workout today in shorts and a sports bra and I felt like it was a May day of track practice! What a way to life the spirits!
Anyway, the workout today consisted of some "faster" stuff which is really where I struggle in most of my athletics endeavors. I place faster in quotation marks because my intervals (all of shorter nature) were based on a pace of 5:40/mile. Under no circumstances would I consider this pace that incredibly fast and indeed I used to be able to handle things like full mile repeats at 5:40 pace. Now a 200 at 5:40 pace feels like sprinting, but nonetheless, I am no longer a spring chicken and I can't expect to run like one. :)
Based on that 5:40 pace my interval time goals were :42 (200), 1:25 (400), 2:07 (600), 2:50 (800), 3:33 (1000). For the rest interval I jogged 1/2 the distance of the previous interval.
20 minute warmup to track
200 (:40)
400 (1:26)
600 (2:06)
800 (2:49)
1000 (3:33)
800 (2:49)
600 (2:07)
400 (1:25)
200 (:42)
25 minutes cooldown home
When I started off I thought "hmm...this isn't so bad" but I think that was just temporary euphoria as based on the fact that I wasn't doing something like a 6 mile tempo run. Mentally a 400 meter repeat is a lot easier to handle than 40 minutes of hard tempo running. Physically, however, the 40 minutes doesn't seem to take nearly the toll of that :85 of pain. Interesting that lactic acid stuff.
Either way it was a good workout. I put in at least 10 miles total. And hopefully that faster stuff will start to make 6-6:15 pace feel easier...as in easy enough to run 10K straight in it. :)
Posted by beth at November 10, 2006 8:20 PM