The Interval Solution

Hail my running brothers and sisters!  Last Saturday, I had one of those days where the wheels fell off and I could barely get my act together to finish 6 miles.  We all get a bad day once and awhile.  That day that we can’t focus and we can barely move.  Today was not that day.  Today I had an awesome day!  I went to the track at David Lipscomb University to knock out my 885m intervals.  It was an beautiful sunny, 62 degrees, but it was a bit windy.  Still, I was feeling strong.  I did a mile warmup, and then worked into my intervals.  I did 8 x 885m intervals with 442.5m recovery runs in between the intervals.  I was jamming to my country tunes, getting my inner redneck on.  Easier than you would believe for a a little brown man from the Philippines.  All those years tooling around in my red, Chevy Tahoe in Tullahoma must have paid off.  Anyway, my intervals went well.  I felt strong working through them, but at the end, I was dead tired.  After some gatorade and quick change of clothes at the office, I felt energized again.  There is something about speed work that totally recharges the body and mind.  I felt great pushing my body through the repeats and focusing on holding my pace kept all those negative thoughts from the other day out of my head.  Like I said, I felt, and still feel, great.  I’m pumped for my half-marathon on Sunday, but I’m trying to keep it in perspective.  I’m approaching it as a training run for my full marathon in April, so if I can hold a 8:30 pace, I will be very happy.  The ultimate goal is to finish strong, but not overly sore or injured, so I can maintain my training.  Now that I’ve gotten my big workout for the  week out of the way, I only have one more base mileage run left.  I’ll probably rest tomorrow or do some light cross-training.

Okay now for the hard numbers:  8x885m intervals at respective times of 3:36.19, 3:40.22, 3:36.98, 3:35.88, 3:24.15, 3:32.21, 3:29.61 and 3:28.20.  An average pace of 3:32/885m.  Not as good as last week, but I’m glad that I’ve remained pretty consistent.  Later kids!