Turnips Running Amok

wow, I didn't realize it has been this long since I posted!
VERY busy at work, gardening, ect., ect. but luckily i have not been too busy to run!
Last week I was worried about my 10 mile run as the last one went awful. I am pleased to report that it felt so good on saturday that I extended it to 11 miles and I felt great!
This week I am trying to up the mileage a bit. I really want my shortest run of the week to be 6 miles (eventually) but am taking it slow. Replaced my 4 miler with a 5 and 5 milers with 6 this week and so far its going OK except that my groin muscle was pulling a bit today. Stretched that out thoroughly and am taking the day off tomorrow to prevent any major disasters.
I also had another great speed workout! I did 4 x 800 m at 7:30 mile pace. I felt strong the whole way but was definitely pushing it (maybe why my muscle hurt today?). Either way I am going to see how this muscle feels the rest of the week and adjust accordingly. Either way I think it will be an easy week next week as I will be out of town at a wedding. Will take the oppurtunity to give my body a break...

Posted by Turnip at 12:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Despite what I always say to myself leading up to these workouts (i.e.-I HATE intervals, I don't want to go to the track, blah blah blah) I always end up enjoying those workouts. Yesterday I did an interval workout on the track in the midst of another group preparing for competition (AMAZING to watch! They are at least 3x fast as I could ever hope to be!)

2 mile warm up
6 x 400 m with 200m jog and 1 minute rest in between
2 x 200m with 200m jog and no rest in between.
2 mile cool down.

The 400 m splits were about 1:50 to 1:55 which gives a 7:23 per mile pace
The 200m splits were about :50 to :55 which gives a 6:42 per mile pace

I am trying to up the ante on these speed intervals because I would really like to bring my times down. I will only be doing these interval workouts once a week or once every other week depending on how I feel. I know that at this workout I felt GREAT! I feel like I could have even gone a bit faster. This is a huge improvement as before I started training for the half marathon this pace for intervals was manageable but more painful. I think all that distance running with 10 and 12 mile runs really helped me out a lot! I don't plan on running a 7:20 per mile in ANY race distance as that is way out of my league at the moment, but I am hoping to hit between an 8:00 and 8:15 mile for my next 5K and an 8:20 to 8:30 mile (more towards 8:20) for my next 10K.
Nonetheless I am still shooting for another half in a couple of months and really hope to bring my pace down there too to about a 10:00 mile or less. Just a a couple of easy 5 mile runs this week and a long run of 10 miles this weekend to go. Hopefully my 10 mile run will feel good this week (last week I cramped up a lot). Happy running and congrats to all RBF'ers who finished the marathon in San Diego! I will get there someday...

Posted by Turnip at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)