I woke up this morning anxious about what type of run I wanted to accomplish. My legs felt great despite yesterdays hill repeats, but I still had that feeling that my lungs wanted to leap out of my chest. I considered a longer easy run 8-10 miles, however, since I skipped intervals last week, I decided to give them a try.
Another accommodating fall morning … 41*, sunny and slightly windy … cool enough for gloves and knit cap. The park was plenty crowded as holdovers from the Marathon are making a week of it in NYC … keep spending people! After brief stretching I went to work on the trails. Just like yesterday, the legs and mind were in agreement and wanted to go fast. However, the lungs protested through out the 3-mile warm up. Nonetheless, I pushed the negative split pace to a Tempo level, which may not be the smartest strategy as I knew 800s were next, but at some point I need to push on thru barriers no matter how painful they are to get to the next barrier.
Next up, 800 repeats. My other thought on the warm up, aside from wanting to recalibrate my base speed, was that I wanted to feel a bit tired before I started the intervals. Historically, I bust out too fast for the first couple and thought maybe a way to counterbalance that energy is to run it out before hand. My goal is 3:30-3:35. Did it work? Not really. Here are the splits:
1st: 3:12 (insane!)
2nd: 3:22 (better, but still too fast)
3rd: 3:24 (getting closer)
4th: 3:20 (huh?)
5th: 3:13 (what?)
In effect, I did a ladder interval, which is fine, I guess. I was probably at 85%-90% of a full on sprint. What’s odd is that I felt less winded during the interval than the warm up laps. It could be that I “warmed up” and my body felt like it was doing less work comparatively even though I was working much harder. Bottom line, I need to more consciously slow down. There is no other way. I almost wish I had a self-regulating taser that buzzed me when I fall out of range.
Does any of this make sense to you?
Overall, 6 miles today and a good hard workout.