I posted this by mistake in the Couch to 5K forum, but this is where I meant to post it! 😀
I wasn’t going to do interval training today, but I know it’s good to mix things up, so inspired by Birdlady64 I set out just before sunrise. Shorts, long sleeved top, wind jacket and trusty sun visor were the clothes of the day!
On my warm up walk I took a peek at the washes. The talk in the village yesterday was that ‘the washes are filling up!’ Or just ‘the Wash is up’. To translate, this means that the Ouse Washes are flooding. I took the photo above from the road while I still can (it will soon be under water). The land in the image was a meadow a few weeks ago! The bodies of water will soon join up and the whole area will be under water. I went back to take the photo after my run. It’s wonderful living in the fens.
I had prepared a simple workout in the Garmin app - 60 seconds of running followed by 90 seconds of slow jogging. I did this 10 times, which was an increase on my previous attempt of 8. Next time I will do more, I think. This workout only took me to 3.2 km. Last week I had struggled with it, so I didn’t want to overdo the increase. I have not found this easy on previous attempts.
I did not include my warm up and warm down walks in the workout, but one mistake I made was to end on a ‘jog’. Next time I’ll make sure I end on a run, then I can end the workout and go straight into my warm down walk. I did know this, but I forgot!
This time, I did find it slightly easier and, dare I say, I was almost enjoying it! The watch vibrated, telling me to move to the next part of the workout, but I missed a cue in the middle as I was watching a particularly large flock of Whoopers flying overhead!
Garmin shows your pace for each section in the stats, I was stunned to see that my pace in a couple of the sections towards the end was 5 something! Yes, 5 something! I know it’s only for 60 seconds, but hey! 😄 If I can do it for 60 seconds, I’ll eventually be able to do it for longer and a sub 30 minute 5K may not be an impossible dream after all! 🏃♀️🏃♀️🏃♀️😀👍
Back home for porridge 🥣, the Breakfast of Champions 🏃♀️🏃♀️🏃♀️👍
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Jools2020
Graduate10
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Good post from you Jools2020 whether it was on this forum or the C25K forum, lovely photo and a great run for you, interval training is good for all runners.
It's so interesting see photographs from all over the UK where runners run, I have sent in several and have had great feedback on the wonderful places I run
You say that the road that you took that photo will soon be flooded, a lot of small islands all over the world, especially in the Pacific Ocean will soon be under water with rising ocean levels, perhaps the fens as well, enjoy your runs.
Nice run & lovely picture. I can imagine myself back there as a child with the moorhen and the water voles swimming past and the Whoopers overhead. A lovely run with a very speedy 60 seconds included, good work, you certainly earned that porridge 😄
Haha, I don’t know about that! I made a mistake with designing the workout and missed a cue in the middle, but apart from that, it went according to plan! 😂
Hey Jools, you inspired me to try my hand at setting up my Garmin Vivoactive for intervals, it’s such a cool feature! But I have a question I hope you can answer. I tried googling but haven’t found anything yet.
On my Garmin Connect app, I chose “Training/Workouts/Create a Workout/Run”, from there I set my warmup to be distance based, then my repeat intervals to be time based for Run and Recover, then my cool down I set to be “lap button press” so that I could keep running slowly at the end to make up the total distance I wanted for the entire thing (4K). My problem is that during the workout, my watch displayed the activity I was supposed to be doing (Run, Recover, Cooldown) and it displayed the distance or time remaining for that interval, but it never displayed the total distance I had run.
I ended up having to press the button to end the workout, then it displayed my total distance, I saw I needed another .5k so I pressed the button again and it kept recording. I’d like to be able to see, while I’m in the middle of the intervals, how far I’ve gone for the entire run. Do you know how to do that?
Did you try swiping? I did notice the same thing, but at one point, somehow the watch had changed itself to the normal face I have while running, where you can see the distance. The workout continued in the background and I swiped to get it back. As long as you don’t press the stop button, the workout should continue, but I would experiment before trying it in the middle of an actual workout!
I swiped once, right I think. But it just brought me back to my normal watch face with just the time (& battery power, & the other widgets I have set for normal day to day use). I was so scared that I’d accidentally ended the run tracking that I quit swiping! Next time I will swipe the other way.
Thanks! It’s good to know there is a way to see it, I’ll just have to play around with it.
I'm on a forerunner so it will be different, but when I start a run on my watch the "finding GPS screen" has an options bit at the bottom, and under that there's a data screens menu which allows me to set what data I have during the run. I have mine set up with a series of screens that I can switch between so I have a total time/distance/pace; heart rate and cadence; lap time/distance/pace; a clock. When I do a workout it then adds a workout screen which tells me distance/time for the stage I am in. During the workout I use my up and down buttons to move between them.
Thanks! I actually have played around with those settings before, but I never knew you could get to it that way, much easier than how I was doing it before! And since you mentioned your up/down buttons, which I don’t have on the vivoactive because mine’s a touch screen, I started experimenting a bit and sure enough, swiping UP brought me to the data screen with distance! Yay! I’m all set now for my next intervals workout.
Great stuff Jools! Way to go - you've cracked it 😁
I made the same mistake first time I tried intervals and ended the workout on a recovery interval so just kept running for a bit. I think I'll do the same again for my short run next week. My run intervals were all 6 something - so I need to get at least one starting with a 5! 💪
The photo is wonderful - as usual. The light looks pretty special. And more Whoopers - magical! 😁
Yes - when the sun is low in the sky it can be wonderful.
I'll have to take a trip down to the estuary salt marsh and see how many Brent Geese are around. Maybe if the paths are not too bad I could go for a run there
It looks a lovely, peaceful setting in the morning light. I do like how you are able to mix up your runs so much. I am still doing the ‘same old’ thing but just trying to stay regular with it. I struggled on Wednesday as it is getting hot, the sun is high early, and I stopped after 4km. This morning, Friday, I set my alarm for 5.30 so it wasn’t quite so hot yet, and tried my first run with the Nike Run app, the 5km. It went well and I feel good after this one. No swans flying where I am but there were a few Rainbow Lorikeets in the bottlebrush bushes eating at the flowers as I jogged passed this morning, which was a treat to get up so close to them.
You’re going to have to run early to avoid the heat! In the summer, I was already out running by 5.00 a.m. I remember the Rainbow Lorikeets when I was staying with my cousin, who lives on acres near Sydney.
Mixing up runs is great for variety. One long, slow run a week is how I started and it’s just great to really slow down, take the pressure off and enjoy the surroundings. Before this, I was going out 3 times a week and running for 30 minutes but getting frustrated at my lack of progress, so that’s when I started to mix up the runs. We all do what is best for us and as long as we are out there running, that’s the important thing!
I did my intervals run this morning too, great to break a pace isn't it, mine shocked me as my average pace was my fastest to date with fastest run being 4:20 never seen that on my graph before, does show you are getting faster by going slower for longer though. Well done on a great run and great Photo.
Great post and you’ve inspired me to try intervals. I’m getting better at plodding round but it’ll be interesting to see if I have another speed to add to plod jog and walk 👍
I found them really hard at first and I ended up walking the recovery parts; but actually managed to slow jog them yesterday. I’ve now edited my workout to include a few more repeats! At the moment, running for 60 seconds and recovery jog of 90 seconds suits me fine. 😊 Maybe I’ll extend the running part later (but as I was typing that, I was already thinking ‘maybe I won’t!’) 😂
I did at first, but it wasn’t quite a long enough workout with just 8 minutes total of running, So I designed a workout in the Garmin app. My workout is now 12 repeats of running for 60 seconds and jogging for 90 seconds. Then a run of 60 seconds to finish. I’ll do the warmup and warm down walks separately as I don’t want to record those. Do you have a Garmin watch?
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Oh I like this!!! 😀👍😀
