Time To Run

At some point I had come across an article that was one of those that gave ideas for quick workouts that could be done on the treadmill. One of them said to warm up for 1/4mile, do a mile at a faster pace, recover for a 1/4 mile, do a mile at .5mph faster than the first mile, recover for a 1/4 mile, and then finish with a mile at .5 faster than the 2nd mile. This was labeled as a "30 minute" workout. I used this as what I called a "judgement day" in my training when I started last summer to see how I was progressing. If I could complete it without feeling like I was losing a lung i would increase each pace by .1. If I could barely finish it then I would leave the same and if I couldn't finish I would move back .1. This workout was done weekly. See the below which is taken from my blog post of August 17, 2006.

I do my midweek runs in the morning on the gym treadmill. Yesterday I did my weekly Wednesday trial run. The goal was to do 3 one mile intervals progressively faster starting at 6.5 mph for the first, 7.0 mph for the second, and 7.5 mph for the third. Warmup/recoverly quarters are done before the first and between the miles at 5.5mph. I was excited that I completed this very easily considering 4 weeks ago I couldn't even complete this series dong 6.4/6.9/7.4 for my miles. I felt strong on the last mile and even kicked up the tmill to 8.4 for the last 200. The result was 3.75 miles in 33:38 which gets me just under 9min/pace overall! Next Wednesday I will try to complete it at 6.6/7.1/7.6 with 5.6 warmup/recoveries.

Well today I got that workout done in under 30 minutes! I did 6.5 for the recovery and warmup and did the mile repeats at 7.5 (8:00 pace), 8.0 (7:30 pace), and 8.5 (7.03) pace. The last quarter mile I did the first 200 at 9.0 (6:40 pace) and 9.5 (6:19 pace). I actually had to finish up back at 6.5 to get a full 30 minutes in. So 3.83 miles in 30 minutes flat. It's great to see how much I have improved!

Next week will be at 6.6/7.6/8.1/8.6....