Easy Treadmill Run

The scheduled run for this morning was a speed interval workout - 8 x 1200 with 2 min recovery between intervals.  However, I figured out last night that there was no way I was going to get this workout in.

Last night I had a few friends over to watch the Redskins first pre-season game, talk fantasy football, drink a beer and eat some seven-layer dip (yummm).  The game lasted until 11pm - so I didn't get off to bed until 11:30.  While getting ready for bed I started planning for the morning...

I had an 8:30am meeting in Sterling, VA - about 35 miles away - and I knew I wanted to leave the house before 7am to beat some of the traffic.  I could leave really early, run at a High School track in Virginia, shower at the Fitness First in Reston, VA - about 5 miles away from where my meeting was going to be.  So I started to calculate when I would need to leave the house to get this workout in...5:30am?!?!?!?  I set my alarm for 5:15am, laid out my running clothes, got my gym bag set with my work clothes and then thought about it.  This would be the second night in a row with less than 5 hours of sleep for me.  I was already on the verge of getting a cold and running an 8 mile workout on less than 5 hours of sleep was not going to happen!!!

So, I decided not to turn my alarm on and I would sleep in until my body woke up - or at least until one of my kids woke me up.  It ended up being the later (surprise!) so I was out of bed at 6am.  I decided I would switch up my days and do an easy run this morning - at the gym in Reston on the treadmill - and do the interval workout tomorrow.

By the time I got to the gym, I only had about 30 minutes for my workout.  I wanted to leave enough time to shower, grab a quick something to eat (there's a Whole Foods Market next door!) and get to my meeting on time.  I ended up running 2.5 miles at an easy 10:50/mile pace.  Average heart rate was a low 140!  As much as I hate running on the treadmill at the gym, my performance is always better due to the fact that there are no hills and no humidity.

The bad thing - I started coughing a bit this morning and now I'm starting to feel achey.  I've been popping zinc tablets and I'm going to hit the sack early tonight.  I won't set an alarm for tomorrow morning, however, if I wake up early enough and feel OK, I'll try to do the speedwork either at the track or at the gym.