Mile Repeats in Mexico!

8 days ago, I was running intervals in shorts and was BURNING UP. As I mentioned in a brief post earlier this week, we were outside of Ixtapa for a full week with my extended family! I had a number of solid workouts while I was there that I'll post about later, but today I just want to mention some mile repeats.

I ran these early in the day under the street lights and didn't bring a camera or phone, but here are some photos from 4 years ago showing the trails I was on:

There was a trail that went between the 4 lanes of traffic outside of our resort.


The trail jumped across the road a few times. It was like an old asphalt track.


An opening to the Pacific!

I stashed a water bottle right around the area of that first photo, which would be where I started and ended my intervals. Then I planned to run back towards the resort for a 1/2 mile before turning around to head back to my water bottle. The plan was to do 3x1 mile intervals with about 3:00 rest. I knew they'd be slower as I was running up a hill to start and it was warm and a bit humid which I'm not used to in January!

Also, I knew they'd be slow when a "-1 performace condition" popped up on my Garmin during my warm-up. It pops up often during my warm-up to say +3 or +4, but NEVER a NEGATIVE in my warm-up. So I was already working based on the hills and the weather.

After a 1+ mile warm-up, I did this:

3:01 + 2:51 = 5:52.7
2:54 walking

3:05 + 2:48 = 5:54.3
3:02 walking

3:02 + 2:44 = 5:46.5

I'm not used to half-mile splits being over 3:00 for mile repeats, but those were the conditions. I didn't kill myself on this workout, but I can't claim that I was sandbagging either. It was just a nice workout in a warmer and hillier area than I'm currently used to. I actually had to stop doing a 2x2 mile interval workout in Mexico 4 years ago as I suddenly got too hot. So I was happy I FINISHED this workout even if I didn't QUITE work as hard as I could have.

My entire workout map.


Close-up of where I crossed the road. I started in the middle but finished on
the side, and you can see I cut more diagonally across the road during the intervals.


Pace and HR tell likely stories.


Elevation. The intervals were each of the "mountains:" started low,
and turned around at the high point only to run back to the low point.

Back with more on my Mexico workouts shortly!

UPDATE: here's a post full of Mexico photos!!