After a flying five on Friday, it’s been a busy weekend. Trying to find a run window has been pretty much impossible. I think I’m going to have to turn into an early bird. Around 3pm, there was a random gap so I decided to go out. I spent a while scrolling through NRC but nothing was grabbing me. My watch was suggesting an interval run so I thought-why not! The way this worked was a 15 minute warm up, [40 seconds fast, 3 minutes super slow] x 5 then 10 minutes cool down.
This was a great excuse to practice running at set paces. I don’t do this often- I usually run by effort. Mixing it up is always bonus so thought would give it a go. Extra long warm up as per all speed runs and off out the door.
The warm up was nice and gentle. Tricky to stick to the required pace up the hill and down the hill-I did get a little “pace high” warning but I reined it in! Only 1 second off the aim so I was super pleased with that.
First interval is always tough. It’s tricky to see my watch as I’m flying along so I just went for it and hoped it was vaguely right. I tried to hold back a little bit so I could still do the last one at the same pace. Forty seconds is a weird time but felt ok. Watch beeped for recovery which I was pleased about! The recovery pace it wanted was so hard to stick to-too fast to walk but really, really slow for running, especially after a bit of a sprint. Lots of unhappy beeping from Mr Garmin. Still, three minutes recovery is a real treat and I felt good for the next one.
I managed for confuse myself and thought I was doing seven, which meant I spent the first three thinking “oh no-there are so many to go-this is hard!” But when I was suddenly on to the cool down after interval five, I was quite sad to have finished! I think this probably helped me not go too hard and run out of pace. I had a lovely run home, picked up my rucksack and cooled down with a walk to the local shop for coffee and some essentials.
Super pleased that Garmin put myVO2 max up. Definitely feel like I’m on the way back again now. The interval paces were really decent-there was only an 8 second range between the slowest and fastest which I’m really pleased about. Racking up 6km was a nice surprise too-I never got very far from home because I was running back and for on a lane. When time is short, sometimes a bit of speed is what you need!
Happy running everyone! Photo is some more cows who were quite confused by my running pattern along the lane!
Nike Run Club 60’s
Speedy Creek Running
