Some Cold Mile Repeats

Yesterday morning, I had about a half hour of free time. So I crammed in my first set of mile repeats in a long time! I figure if I'm planning on racing the "Meet of the Miles" track meet on January 14th, I better start running faster!

On my early Wednesday morning run, I swung past the St. Thomas track. I was hoping the sun would have melted off all 10+ inches of snow, but it hadn't. It still looked like this:

Dang.

So I figured I could run intervals on the sidewalks around the edge of campus. St. Thomas (like most schools) does a good job of clearing snow, so the sidewalks are usually in great shape. Sure enough, they were:

Around my 0.5 mile turn-around point along Summit.


Around the 0.25 / 0.75 mark along Cleveland.

I started at Cleveland and Selby, and I ran down to Summit Ave, and then nearly to Cretin (and then back). I used mapmyrun.com to find my 0.5 mile marker where I'd turn around:

Just past the entrance to the new building.

Being it was only 10 degrees (I was wearing a lot of layers and it's difficult to breathe cold air) and I hadn't done intervals in a while, I wasn't sure what I could do. I was HOPING to do a descend like 5:45, 5:40, and 5:3x. But I was a little slower than that.

3 x 1 mile starting every 8:00 (just over 2:00 rest between intervals).

During the first interval, I figured I'd never negative split an interval because it was mainly downhill on the way out...

... meaning it was mainly uphill on the way back. But I ran the first 0.5 mile too easy, so I negative split the heck out of my first one:

     • 2:58 + 2:52 = 5:50

I started the second one with "tired" but not "heavy" legs. I love that feeling.

     • 2:51 + 2:54 = 5:45

I was HOPING to descend a little more on the final one, but I couldn't. It was a good speed workout.

     • 2:53 + 2:53 = 5:46

I used to LOVE intervals! The feeling of getting such a solid workout completed in only a half hour was a big "turn on" to me. It felt like I had accomplished so much. But after spending much of the year doing LONGER and slightly EASIER runs, I've decided that I like doing that more than intervals.

I'm pretty surprised that I was able to run a decent pace for most of my races this year while doing MUCH LESS speedwork. Apparently, I've come to the (obvious) conclusion that if you plan on racing LONGER races, then put more emphasis on getting in MORE MILES and not SPEED WORKOUTS.

Duh Steve.  Duh.