An Interval "Test" Along the River

On August 6th, I hit the track for a 3x1600 meter workout. I said something on the 21st about feeling good about my "no longer injured" training, and that I'd like to do some more speed work the following week. But then I pulled up injured again the week of the 23rd. (Not a new injury, but the pain from May was back.)

This past week had some normal feeling runs (on the treadmill), so I thought I'd risk it on Friday and hit the trails for my favorite endurance/speed workout: 2 x 2 mile interval workout with 3:00 rest between efforts.

I did a few things different as I was still worried about being injured. First, I drove to the trail along the river in case I pulled up hurt (I didn't want to have to run back up the hill an extra mile [or more] if the pain came back). Second, I did them a bit farther north than I usually do just so I could avoid a hill (I wanted to be on flat ground as much as possible). Here's my Garmin map of my back-and-forth along the river:

Started near the MPLS/St. Paul border by Eustis Street (at the
bottom of a hill) and ran 1 mile NW to nearly Franklin Ave and back.


I parked on Eustis and a close-up of my route shows me
heading back to my car for sips of water before/after intervals.


There's something very satisfying about zooming in on just the red (FAST) sections!

Notice in that first "overall" map that the upper right shows it was raining and there was a 16 mph breeze from the SE. The temp was nice, but the other 2 sucked a bit. I truly had no goals for this workout other than to hopefully be pain-free! I told myself "you usually run sub-12 easily, but you're going to be OK with 13:00 today!"

After a quick out-and-back 1.1 mile warm-up, I walked for 3 minutes and got ready to go.

My first half-mile split was appropriately depressing at 3:09. Usually I'm running sub-3:00, and again, I told myself that's OK for today. But I DID try to pick up the pace a bit after that one. And then I ran a 2:59 for the next split, so I was back to working.

My first 2 mile interval looked like this:

3:09 + 2:59 + 3:01 + 2:57 = 12:09.23

Honestly, after starting so slow, that felt pretty good. I was happy with that! Time for #2:

3:05 + 2:59 + 3:03 + 2:50 = 11:59.97

Yep, a 2:50 final split! I picked it up, but didn't "sprint all out" to the finish, AND it was into the wind. Which meant I was sandbagging it a bit. But honestly, that was about exactly what I needed to do for that workout! Any easier, and it wouldn't have been a true "test." Any harder, and I could have hurt something once my form went to hell and I was still pushing. So I was QUITE happy. (With the workout and not necessarily my splits.)

Warm-up, then 2 intervals, then cool-down. Pretty easy to see.


A sweaty and wet boy after finishing the final interval. (Back at my car for a sip.)
And that vein is JUST starting to pop out on my forehead. :)


Oh yeah, there were 2 groups of turkeys that I kept running through, which
is very common on that stretch. (One north and one south of the rail bridge.)

I ran just over a mile as a cool-down, so the workout clocked in at 6.7 miles. Usually that workout is 7-8+ miles, but I cut the warm-up and cool-down short as to not tack on too many extra miles.

I'm still not confident enough to declare that I've beat this calf/achilles thing, but I'm feeling better. Today's long run for the week will still be on the treadmill, but then I hope to get outside for my 2 other runs this week. We'll see how it all feels!