Friday, August 7, 2009

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.

3 comments:

Patty said...

Good for you! We do everything we can to avoid intervals. The local running club does them every Tues. night on the track but we have been maybe 5 times. One session that wasn't bad was hill repeats, where we started at the bottom of a long fairly steep hill, and ran up as fast as we could for 10 sec. and then caught our breath and did it again, and again till we reached the top, then jogged down and did it again. 10 sec. is doable uphill and the legs get quite rubbery. Even though we know this is good for us, we don't do it regularly which is amazing. I think it would be quite hard doing this run through the neighborhood, what about the High School track?

Claire said...

I think that track is sand/dirt, not really what I want to run on, I have to admit. I've thought about it before but lately they've been having football practice there in the morning.

I'd like to try the hill repeats too, I just need to find a good hill! Somehow I don't think the little slopes in my neighborhood count.

My legs are really sore now, but I'm kind of on a high from the run. The Garmin claims the fastest I ran was about a 6 minute mile pace, although obviously I only sustained that pace for a few seconds. Still, it's a good feeling!

marathon mom said...

As much as I hate intervals, I do miss doing them with our local running club. However, I haven't had much luck trying to convince my running friends to join me. They are great for increasing your aerobic threshold and really do help get your overall pace down. I think we are all waiting to be done with the marathon training before working on speed, but I'm not sure if it wouldn't help to do both. The GPS is great for intervals, although that beeping noise can get annoying at times.