3x1600 Intervals, a Long Hard Ride, and a Long Run

I didn't mean for this to happen, but the last 3 days have all been really intense. Time to back off a bit to keep from getting injured.

Let's look at the last FOUR days...

Thursday was a quick upper body workout and then a quick spin before taking my boys camping for a night. Nothing special there.

But then on Friday when my boys and I got back from camping, we looked for a dry/clear track so I could run some intervals. St. Thomas had a lot of ice on the back stretch in 2 spots, so we checked out St. Paul Academy. It was better, so I ran there. I grabbed my phone for the last warm-up lap to show that it wasn't quite clear - I made these photos while still running easy:

Around 75 meters into the lap, I was pushed out to lane 3 to avoid the ice.


At the end of the turn, I'd jump to the edge of lane 4 to avoid the puddles.


Back stretch was damp, but had lane 1 open.


Big puddle draining through lane 1 at the 200 meter mark.


Turning for home was CLEAR!


And the homestretch was good too!


Close-up of that last photo shows a black fence that JUST went up!
The S.P.A. track is now able to be locked up! NOOOO!!!!

I had no goals and actually didn't even think about what my splits should/could be until I was nearing the end of my first fast lap. Oops. Here are my 800 splits and 1600 totals:

#1: 2:50.8 + 2:47.1 = 5:37.9
Walking rest: 2:59 (160 meters)

#2: 2:47.9 + 2:45.2 = 5:33.1
Walking rest: 2:58 (170 meters)

#3: 2:48.0 + 2:39.9 = 5:27.9

I didn't know if I'd be able to finish that 3rd interval, but the fear of some guys working on the lockable fence in the distance (wondering if they'd come tell me and the boys to get off the track) kept me running hard and scared. My times were decent, but I looked back and found faster splits that I'd posted last year... but that was in May and this was a good start for a mid-March workout.

Selfie post-intervals (boys in the background).


My Garmin showed me swinging wide around the ice and puddles.


Lots of splits. (Interesting how the "starting" splits
[3, 6, and 9] are before the midway and finishing splits.)


Oh yeah, that 15 mph breeze down the homestretch suuuuucked.

Then on Saturday, I thought it was time for a long, hard ride. I did 100 minutes with the middle as 10x(3 mins hard and 2 mins easy). I don't think I've ever done that workout with TEN intervals - usually 6-8 is where I end up.

Finally, Sunday's workout came by surprise. I woke up arond 4 a.m. and realized I had a lot of grading to do the next day (today) from an online class that had work due at 11:59 p.m. Sunday night, so I had the thought "huh... maybe I should do my Monday long run today (on Sunday)." I do that now-and-then where I move up my long run by a day and then take my "2 day rest" from running as Mon/Tues instead of Sat/Sun. But when I do that, it's usually not after a hard run on Friday! And it was going to be my first OUTDOOR long run since the Moustache Run half marathon 16 weeks ago!! And my first outdoor "training" long run since early November (19 weeks ago).

Because of the hard workouts the 2 days before and the fact that it was going to be more taxing on my body because it was outdoors and not on a flat/soft treadmill, I wasn't going to do my normal 11+ miles. I ended up going 10.37 with the middle 5 (instead of the middle 6) a bit faster.

After a faster-than-normal warm-up (oops), I turned in 5 faster middle miles with half-mile splits of 3:12, 3:12, 3:08, 3:10, 3:11, 3:09, 3:07, 3:09, 3:07, 3:02 = 31:32 for fast 5 miles (6:18.40 pace). It ended up being 10.37 miles in 1:11:28, which is 6:54/mile average.

You can see where I started and ended my harder 5 miles on the
Franklin Ave bridge, running hard on the MPLS side of the Mississippi.


Heartrate went nuts! Above 200 for the last 1.5 miles of the harder miles, maxing out at 210.

Alright, time for nothing but some core today! And then just an easy spin tomorrow. Here's what my workouts look like for the last 3 weeks with GREEN being "easy," YELLOW being "moderate," and RED being "hard," and you can see there's no stretch quite like the last 3 days:

Happy with these harder workouts, but also happy to back it off for a few days! :)