Second Hard Run

I did another hard fartlek run on Friday. That was 2 weeks after my first hard run since August, as I'm not trying to overdo it.

I first thought I'd do the same run as 2 weeks before and try to be faster. But since my goal isn't all kinds of short bursts of speed (it's more of an endurance/speed mix), I figured I'd add in a 4th effort instead of just 3 like last time. So I headed out for 4x 3:00 hard / 2:30 easy.

My warm-up felt extra slow, so I was ready to have a slower first interval. I was OK "easing into" this workout if need be. But I found my Garmin beeping and taking a half mile split before 3:00 - it was at 2:57 which meant I was at sub-6:00 pace. Two weeks before, only my last interval (of 3) was at sub-6:00 pace. So I worked to keep the effort up.

Here were my splits:

[My Garmin has been set to take half mile splits for many years, but I need to set that to longer splits so I can manually hit the lap button at the right time when doing a workout like this in the future. Instead of guessing "has it been X seconds since it gave me my half mile split?"]

- 5:51.9 pace = 2:57 + 0:03 (0.5 miles + 61 ft)
- 5:45.3 pace = 2:53 + 0:09 (0.5 miles + 143 ft), taken into account for the extra 2 secs too
- 6:15.0 pace = 3:00, 0.48 miles, the most uphill section of this route
- 5:54.1 pace = 2:58 + 0:03 (0.5 miles + 44 ft)

Average interval pace: 5:56.6
(Ave pace 2 weeks ago only doing 3 intervals: 6:01.7)

The 3 "easy" run segments between the 4 intervals were 0.31 miles (8:03 pace), 0.30 miles (8:29 pace), and 0.32 miles (7:53 pace).

The first 2 intervals were "with" a gentle breeze that I didn't notice until I turned around and felt that I was "against" the breeze for the last 2.

Just another boring "straight" run. Note the 2 little shoots
to the east where I ran up to poorly timed stoplights.


Pace info from the run. Intervals highlighted in red. The
3rd one has a dip in the middle as I was avoiding a stoplight.

So I was able to do a little better this time - faster pace even with an extra rep. It's not that I've become a better runner over the past two weeks doing my standard 4-5 mile easy run 3x each week... it's just that running hard two weeks ago helped remind my body how to run fast. Hoping to keep this up! Maybe a 3-mile tempo run in a week or 2.