More Intervals (and a Valleyfair Trip!)

It was hot and humid this morning, so I figured it was just a great time to hit the track for some more intervals. This was my 2nd set of intervals in a week! As I posted about on Monday, I did some intervals last weekend at the track as well (which was my first track workout in maybe 3 years). I wasn't being shy about saying that it was because I'm hoping to be under 5:00 in the mile in 2 weeks at the next USATF MN race!

As I said in Monday's post, I looked back to 4 workouts that Coach Jen Harrison gave me in 2013 to prep for a road mile. Now I've done #1 and #2. I think I'll skip #3 (which MIGHT be the most important one, unfortunately) in the name of not getting injury / not dying. And then #4 is just a quicker burst of speed the week of the race.

This morning called for 400s. It was a simple workout: 8x400 with 0:60 rest between. I was supposed to drop the times if possible. Five years ago, I ran one in 68, and the rest in 69 or 70 seconds; there was no dropping of times throughout that workout. Today, I glanced at my watch 200 into my first interval, and it was shaping up to be a bit slow: it ended up bing 76 seconds. The depressing thing about that is that 76 sec is 5:04 pace. Dang. I told myself to TRY to get the rest at or under the pace I hope to run this 1 mile.

#2 ended up being my fastest all day at 72 seconds. Then the rest (#3 - #8) were all 73 seconds. I averaged around 4 seconds slower / 400 compared to 5 years ago, but I was OK with that. I'm slower, fatter, and it was HOT this morning. GOOD WORKOUT!!

And yesterday was a big day on my feet: I took the boys to Valleyfair along with my sister-in-law and her 2 kids. My phone has been majorly acting up, so I took 0 pictures during our trip. But here are a few from my sister-in-law:

Lunch time on the edge of the park. It was nearly 100 degrees
and SUPER humid at this point, but the breeze kept us alive.


Charlie "driving" me on the big rigs. (Note part of the "Wild Thing" climb behind us.)


The little guys were UNSURE about these dinos - they moved and scared them every few minutes.


My phone first worked on the way home: TIRED and HOT boys.


Facebook post last night.