Sunday, October 10, 2010

Get My Run On

Run Day

Time- 60 minutes
Distance- 6.22mi

Intervals- 5 minutes run, 5 minutes sprint, 5 minutes jog, repeat

I like running like this. It makes the time pass faster and it makes me feel like a better runner. I know, looking at my time/distance, I'm still not much faster than a 10 minute mile, which is pretty slow, but that wasn't the goal here. The goal here was to find my quick feet again and convince myself that I can run hard for extended periods of time. It's so much a head game with me.
So I took off running at a pretty decent pace, quick feet, like I said. After five minutes I pulled it into a much quicker pace. Sprint isn't really the right word, but it conveys what I was going for. Hard running, pretty full out. And then the jog portions were slow, and got slower as the cycles wore on. But that's ok, they were recovery sections. By the third cycle my sprint fell off after the first few minutes and degenerated to the run speed, but I fought to pull it back up the whole time. I think my run speed stayed consistent the whole time. That's about where I want to be during the race.
The key is coming off the bike and setting a good pace right away. I can't come off the bike and stagger away, that's not going to work for me. I learned back when I was a swimmer that its easier to have a fast swim if you set the pace high right off the bat. It's easy to slow down, it's hard to speed up. Really hard. So I need to plan on being strong and getting quick feet going right away. That way I won't be a mile in and trying to pick it up, because by then it'll be tough. Easier to fight through it and go from the transition.
So, while my runs still aren't "fast", I'm feeling better about them. Wish I hadn't missed those two weeks in the middle. Oh well, too late now. Doing what I can to get it back.

2 comments:

  1. That time with sprints and recovery is pretty good. You'll be fine during the race, you were able to sprint pain free, now stop worrying about it.
    And I'm with ya on the "its easier to slow down than speed up" mentality. You are strong enough to fight through fatigue to the end if you go out hard.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Missed checking in the last few days because of camping, but you accomplished a lot! Good job checking out those lagoons and swimming them, smart. I didn't see anywhere that your foot hurt during the run and I'm glad about that, and that was a LONG ride. WOW! Really looks like you are posed to do your best.

    ReplyDelete