Speed Work

Today I had a day off work. So the plan was to get up early and go to the track for some speed work. Besides some speed play here and there, I have never really done organized speed work. So today was the day.

When the alarm went off, I was cold and tired and achy. So I turned the alarm off and went back to sleep. My kids woke me up about an hour and a half later and after a little moving around I knew that I needed to get out and run as soon as possible or else it would not happen at all.

I have been wanting to find my mile time, so the plan was to do a time trial and find that. Then I wanted to do three or four Yasso 800's just to see where my fitness is and have something to measure improvement as I get closer to the marathon.

I did not feel like driving to the track so I ran in the neighborhood. I still planned to do the mile but instead of 800's I would do three half mile intervals.

I warmed up as I was making my way to a good street to run on. I got to the corner and I was off. I ran hard and made an effort not to look at my Garmin at all. I just focused on the run and tried to keep my form good. It seemed to take a long time to finish this mile. When my watch finally beeped I was all too happy to slow down.

My mile time was 8:12.

Not incredibly fast, but I remember the very first time I tried to "run" a mile it took me about fifteen minutes and I could not even run the whole thing. In fact I think I walked more than half of it at the time.

So time for intervals. I decided to change it up and do four quarter mile intervals with quarter mile recoveries. I realized after the fact that I would do better with shorter recoveries, but live and learn.

Here are the interval times for those:

2:16
2:10
2:15
2:08

For some reason, I think I could have done them a little harder. I do not want to push myself into an injury, so I do not plan on doing speed work every week until I actually start my marathon training program.

But I do enjoy speed work... at least I do as of right now. That will probably change when I am pushing myself even more. I did a total of four miles this morning and mentally is was so much easier than running four miles at an easy pace because it was mixed up so much.

It feels good!

Frustration

This last week I have run a measly 3 miles.

I have tried to fit runs in before or after work and it just did not happen. It gets too dark on my street, and while I actually look forward to running in the dark, I have no safety gear to do it with. I have looked in a few different stores for lights that I can clip to my shirt or shorts, but nothing. I would wear a reflective "sash" or strap on my wrist, but can not find anything except a full vest that is not very fashionable. Looks like I am going to have to order some stuff online.

I ran Saturday and Sunday morning after a full week without running. I really need to get runs in during the week because those runs killed me. Tomorrow is a rest day, and I will definitely have time to run Tuesday and Thursday morning so this weekends runs should be better.

The frustration is really setting in because my progress is so slow. I know it can not be rushed, and I already see a lot of improvement, but I wish I could do a full three miles without stopping for a walk break.

Right now I am just trying to build my mileage over the winter and will work on speed in the spring, but building the mileage seems just as hard as improving the speed.

I am not letting this frustration slow me down though... I am going to continue to run hard and do my best to improve.