More Intervals on the Track (and a week of workouts)

I had a good, fast, long ride 9 days ago (seen in this post), and this all picks up just after that:

• FRIDAY: 2 easy runs with my boys. I posted a few photos from this last weekend. We took "the long way" to Bracket Park, played for nearly an hour, and then ran back home to log nearly 6 miles for the day.

• SATURDAY: 38 minutes of Spinervals (on the trainer) and some upper body strength work. My legs still felt quite heavy from my long tempo ride 2 days before.

• SUNDAY: a failed swim and a little core work. I forgot the indoor tri was going on at the Y and the pool would be reserved. Oops. I got to say hi to a few friends racing, and then I maybe distracted a lap counter who possibly made someone go 1-lap short. Oops again.

• MONDAY: easy long run (7.7 miles), and a little upper body strength work. I was going to pick up the pace for 3 of the middle miles, but my legs weren't feeling it. So I didn't bother to. I decided to do 1 mile a bit faster just to break up the pace. So most miles were around 7:10 with one random mile being 6:15.

• TUESDAY: 3x500 swim. I've started slacking on the swimming since I've been biking more, and I'm seeing it in my splits. At the beginning of the month, I did this workout with a 7:39/500 average. This past week after slacking on the number of times I've been hitting the pool, I did the same workout with a 7:47/500 average. Whoops.

• WEDNESDAY: 71 minutes of Spinervals, and a little core work. This was some longer, sustained intervals. (I hate those, so they MUST be good for me, right?)

• THURSDAY: 7x800 on the track. This came 3 week after my first track workout in about 18 months at the beginning of this month. There were 11 people on the track, and about half of them were doing the "prescribed" workout of 10-16x200. A few were doing less because they were tapering for the big "Get in Gear 10K" which took place this morning. And I wanted to do longer intervals than 200s because short, fast stuff tends to injure me. So I asked Nicole what to run. You might remember Nicole as my "race buddy" from the 2011 Winter Carnival Half Marathon:

Nicole and I pre-race.


Running somewhere around mile 4 along Shepard Road. (I took video throughout the race.)

(Oh, and if you've been a LONG time reader, you might remember the 2009 Tesfa 5K race report where I first met [and raced] Nicole.)

Anyway, Nicole told me to do 800s. She said 3:00 rest, or 2-2:30 if I'm "feeling fit," which I am. So I said I'd take 2:30 rest. And she told me to run 7 of them. She said what I was thinking: "So I'm thinking you'll be able to shoot for 2:40-2:42 for each." She basically gave me a workout that she had hoped she could do. So off I went.

A beautiful morning at the track, but it was only 32 degrees.

Here were my 400 splits and 800 times:

1:16, 1:19 = 2:35
1:17, 1:19 = 2:36
1:17, 1:19 = 2:36
1:20, 1:17 = 2:38
1:17, 1:17 = 2:34
1:19, 1:16 = 2:35
1:18, 1:16 = 2:34

2:35.4 / 800 average

Success. It f*ckin' hurt. I was hoping for just over 2:40s, and I ended up just over 2:35s. Nice.

• FRIDAY: 15x100 swim. Again, a bit slower than other recent swims: this swim averaged 1:25.9/100, which I was pretty happy with. But my last two 15x100 workouts last month averaged 1:24 and 1:23, which are substantially faster.

BOTTOM LINE: Keep swimming as much as possible, keep running "smart" to keep from getting injured, and keep "enjoying" those Coach Troy Spinerval workouts a few times a week. Oh, and don't forget about your leg exercises! Multisport season is coming soon!