"Distance" Intervals by the River

I just wrapped up 2 weeks of Coach Jen's old workouts that lead me to a 10 Mile PR in 2010. I posted about my first week of training about a week ago. My 2nd week was pretty similar: I added some length to the long run to keep it more like my "usual" training over these last few years, made my long day Monday, put my speed day on Friday, and I skipped an easy run which would have had me running on back-to-back days (something I DON'T do to help with injuries). Again, the point isn't to do these same workouts EXACTLY, but to use the "idea" of them and fit them into my normal routine in a way that won't kill me.

So Friday's speed day was something I've been doing pretty regularly since getting this workout from Coach Jen: 2x2 mile intervals. When she first gave me this workout in 2010, I was backing off on some parts of different workouts afraid I'd hurt my achilles, so I realized I never did her TRUE workout, which was 2x2 mile intervals followed by a few hill repeats.

I set a PR for this workout back in March, and I was HONESTLY going to work to break that on Friday. My running has been strong, so why not? And it was a cooler morning without much humidity. My legs felt a little heavy after a big 2 weeks of training, but I was going to see what I could do.

Instead of a 2:49 first half mile split that I got during the PR version of this workout, I had a 3:00. D'oh. And ANOTHER 3:00 half mile split followed that one. "Well, this isn't going to be a PR... but don't WASTE this workout! Still make it a strong one!" Here's what I ran:

3:00, 3:00, 2:47, 2:54 = 11:42.6

3:00 walking rest

2:53, 2:56, 2:46, 2:50 = 11:27.5

My 2nd miles were faster in both, so that was good. I wasn't thrilled with those times, but they weren't horrible - I was happy to get my 2nd one under 11:30!

Intervals from lower-middle-right up to the top left and then back.
(Notice some yellow/orange at the bottom right which were the hill repeats when I was done.)


Pace chart: warm-up, 2 intervals, then 3 hill repeats near the end.


I always have faster footstrikes when I'm running faster. The 2 intervals
and then 3 hill repeats are very visible here in my cadence!

When I looked at this workout from 14 years ago, I saw that I ran 11:48 and 11:34, so my splits of 11:42 and 11:27 were still a bit faster last week than they were years ago! (6 and 7 sec faster!) So "old man Steve" is still doing all right!!