Any time I do short, fast intervals, it is pretty much like this.
Tuesday's assignment:
- 1.5 warm-up / drills / strides
3 x (300m @ 6:11 / 100m jog)
300m jog
3 x (300m @ 6:11 / 100m jog)
2 cool down
The other thing about 300m intervals is that I am just plain not good at them. 6:11 is not a pace I find myself running all that often (shocking), so I don't have a good sense of how it feels, compared to say 5:50 or 6:30. Mentally anything faster than 5K pace just falls under "stupid fast." Also, if I go out too fast or slow, even if I can manage to glance at my watch without running into someone/something & killing us all, there's not much time to adjust.
And so things like this happen:
On each interval I kept telling myself to slow down juuuuuust a hair, which apparently my body interprets as GIVE 'ER MOAR JUICE, CAP'N!! (I kind of wonder if this has to do with needing more time to get warmed up for running this fast.)
Because I am a total numbers / data geek, I get a lot of enjoyment out of recording & tracking my workouts over months & years. I'm not OCD enough to record splits for everything, but I generally do record them for track workouts, so it can be cool to compare a given speed session with the same workout from a while back. According to RunningAhead the last time I ran this workout was in late January, just a few weeks back into running after taking December 2012 off to deal with a foot injury. Behold:
On the blog, I apparently whined a lot after that workout about how out-of-shape I was & how 6:11 was basically just a hair away from all-out sprinting. Which is encouraging, considering that I am once again in a place of constantly whining about how out-of-shape I am, but also now running 300m's in the 5:30-5:40 range with no problem while actively trying to slow myself down.
So yeah; I may not have marathon endurance again yet, but I've apparently got some decent speed in the legs. And that's progress.
Speed's good! I couldn't even dream of hitting those paces now.
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