Long Distance Intervals

After doing some shorter intervals on the track 2 weeks ago, I hit the paved trail along the river for some longer intervals last week. (And yes, that makes it my first back-to-back weeks of speed workouts since before last October's TC 10 Mile!)

I did the 2x2 mile interval workout that I like to do. This was the workout that I PRed about a year ago running 11:28 and 11:24 (first time that BOTH were under 11:30), but I wasn't even dreaming of times like that last week. I didn't know what I'd be able to run, but wanted to make sure I didn't "sandbag" any of the splits - I wanted to keep all of my half-mile splits under 3:00 and see how far under 12:00 I could get each interval.

I opened with a 2:58 half mile, and then the next split was 2:58 as well. I was hoping to knock those down as I turned and finished the last mile of the first interval:

2:58, 2:58, 2:52, 2:54 = 11:44.0

That wasn't bad. Not GREAT, but not bad. Time to really push it for the final one:

2:57, 2:53, 2:52, 2:48 = 11:32.0

I'll take that! Not AMAZING, and nothing like my PR version of this workout from 11 months ago, but a decent place to start this spring.

Pace and HR. My HR was NOT that low for the 2nd one... I haven't been able to
fully trust my wrist HR for a while, but I don't use it for training, so that's OK.


Starting each around split 14, running 1 mile to split 11, and then back.


Close-up of the start/finish area with lots of
walking around before, during, and after the intervals.


Oh, and stopping to go back to grab a big lag screw in the gutter on my warm-up.

After this hard workout and 400s on the track 2 weeks ago, I'm not doing any speed work this week. Also because today is hopefully a big day of workouts, so I should take it easy tomorrow. More on that shortly... But first some "Friday Funnies" tomorrow!