Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Another Speedwork Morning

This morning's plan - 8 mile speedwork session. Run up to QOHS track, do 7 x 800 intervals with a 400 recovery jog, and run back home. This would be a little over 8.25 miles. Great plan.

We got to bed later than I would have liked. We were doing a lot of Passover prep (I'll post about this later...) and then watched the finale of the Biggest Loser (amazing that some of those people now weigh less than me!!!) I somehow woke up at 4:45am and waited for my alarm to go off at 5:15am. I turned it off and then could not get myself out of bed. I was thinking of lots of excuses why not to run this morning, but I finally dragged my behind out of bed at 5:45am.

BTW - I believe that my body could be telling me that I need more sleep and to take a day off (this was one of the things I was saying to myself in bed). But I won't take a speedwork day off - they're too important. Perhaps I'll let myself sleep in tomorrow (do I hear my wife cheering after uttering these words????)

I walked outside in my long sleeve Mizuno BreathThermo shirt and a pair of shorts. It was much colder than I thought so I went back inside for my windbreaker and gloves - good call! After my run I checked the weather site and it was 32 degrees (probably 30 when I started).

When I got to the track, the sun was starting to rise. Excellent! I get to see my interval splits as they happen today.

There were also a bunch of people at the track this morning - many of them looked like they were part of a group doing some kind of Sarge's Program - they would run around the track a few times and then do some exercises on the field.

My first interval I went out waaaaay too fast. Basically, I ended up racing the other people on the track instead of staying within the pace that I should have. When I looked at my watch for my split after I finished the second lap, it said 3:41. That's a 7:22 mile pace. That's INSANELY fast for me. My 800 interval times should be 20 to 30 seconds slower than that, so for the remainder of my time at the track I tried to reel it in so that I would not run so fast. And by my last interval I was really starting to get fatigued....so starting out too fast hurt me.

I really need to bring this lesson with me to the marathon on May 4. There will be lots of people there running the race (I believe it's 1500 running the marathon and even more running the half marathon). I need to be able to pace myself and not try to keep up with or out run others around me. I'll try to develop a mantra to chant to myself at the beginning of the race to remind me :-)

Here are my interval splits: 3:41, 3:54, 4:03, 4:05, 4:03, 4:06, 4:08

1 comment:

Rick said...

You'll likely go out faster than you want anyway. I was very conscious of reigning in my pace at the start and still went faster than I wanted to the first mile. Not terribly so, but still faster than I had planned.

Nice job on the intervals. That's pretty good and consistent pacing. Oh, and Mrs. Fox will be thrilled for you after you finish your first marathon so, the early morning wake ups will have been worth it. Hang in there.