First Day Of School Run

Had a quick run today after dropping Laura off at her first day of school. I have to admit it felt pretty good to get out by myself, although by the time I got home and ready it was after 9:30am and it was insanely hot. I felt like I was plodding the whole way, but I managed a 9:50 pace which is really surprising. The faster running lead to less distance though, and I only did 1.5 miles.

Hoping that I'll build back up to 2 miles pretty soon; for some reason I feel like if I can achieve that, then I can start building more distance, no problem. Hopefully that's true!

Slow Sprinting-Oxymoron or Pathetic Truth?

I had planned to take a walk today, due to feeling a little tired, but in the end decided doing intervals would give me the most bang for my buck, exercising wise. Hard work, but shorter time. I had Laura in the jogging stroller and it's insanely hot, so I didn't go nearly as quickly this time. Plus I upped my walking time to 45 seconds, from 30 seconds the last time.

I did my six reps and only did .97 miles (in 10:30). I suppose if I had just run a straight mile I would have been out for the same amount of time, but I definitely feel I worked harder. Hopefully I won't feel as sore tomorrow as I did last time I did intervals-I could barely walk down the stairs last time! This time my "sprinting" pace hovered around 7:45/8 minutes, much slower than last time when I was managing in the 6's and 7's. But nonetheless, I'm glad I did it, I certainly hadn't planned on doing anything remotely like work today.

First Try At Intervals

So I've read many, many times that to improve my speed, I need to be doing intervals. I recently read the blog of the lovely M.O.R.E. ladies, and I was completely in awe of their times from their most recent race, so I decided that would be my inspiration for today.

I used my handy Garmin to beep at me at the appropriate times-run 1 minute, walk for 30 seconds. I picked 6 reps, which seemed easy enough. I decided my one minute of running would be full out running, as fast as I could. Needless to say, it was insanely hard.

Part of the problem is that I run in a neighborhood, so I have to watch out for cars and yet again, loose dogs. The same dog from last time broke out of it's electric fence, right in front of it's owner, which was quite awesome. It proceeded to chase us so I had to turn around and go back, which really messed up one interval. Last I saw, the dog was heading off into the sunset and the owner was chasing it on bike. That really made my day, for some evil reason.

Towards the end I was definitely not running as fast as at the beginning. My legs feel like lead now, my heart rate was probably through the roof, and I have to say, I have a huge grin on my face. I did 1.01 miles in 9 minutes, which means that my running was pretty face if that was my pace including 3 minutes of walking. I hope that doing this every so often will help my speed.