Two Final Speed Workouts...

... that should have NOT been back-to-back. Oops.

Friday I did my last true "speed" day, which was 8x (3 mins HARD / 3 mins EASY). It looks simple on paper, but it's a longer speed workout: that's a total of 24 mins HARD and 24 mins EASY in the middle of the workout, which is 48 mins of running... not including a warm-up or cool-down. So it ended up being over 9 miles total for me.

I have my Garmin set to take 1/2 mile splits, and I was aware that when I did this workout last year, I ran the first 1/2 mile of the 3 mins hard in 2:40-2:55 (with an extra 0:05-0:20 to make it a full 3:00 effort). I was just hoping to keep this year's under 3:00 as I'm not in the same shape. I ran the first 2 at exactly 3:00, and was really hoping I could hang on to that or even speed them up. I didn't have any sort of perfect negative split (and I wasn't trying to do that), but I kept my first 2 as my slowest:

Split, distance, and (pace)

3:00, 0.50 (6:01)
0.38 (8:00)
3:00, 0.50 (6:01)
0.38 (8:01)... 3:03 to get across a road
2:51 (5:43) + 0:10 (6:00) = 0.53
0.37 (8:01)
2:55 (5:51) + 0:05 (5:47) = 0.52
0.37 (8:07)

2:53 (5:47) + 0:06 (5:35) = 0.52
0.37 (8:04)
2:49 (5:39) + 0.11 (5:50) = 0.53
0.38 (7:55)
2:51 (5:42) + 0:10 (5:33) = 0.53
0.36 (8:14)
2:55 (5:51) + 0:05 (5:29) = 0.52
0.34 (8:52)

= 4.15 miles of hard running

The first half mile of each effort (in order) was 3:00, 3:00, 2:51, 2:55, 2:53, 2:49, 2:51, and 2:55

I went 3.77 miles over the first 4 and 3.81 miles over the final 4 last year (including the easy running), and this year I only ran 3.55 for each half of the workout. So that's a bummer.

4 intervals "out," and then 4 intervals "back" (which are the 4 that can be seen here).


Pace and heart rate - all what you'd expect.

Then on Monday, I went for my last hard long run. I looked back to last year's workouts to see what my last long run was before the TC 10 Mile, and it was 6x (3 mins HARD / 3 mins MODERATE). YES, THAT'S DANGEROUSLY CLOSE TO THE SAME WORKOUTS BACK-TO-BACK WHICH WASN'T THE SMARTEST MOVE. I should have looked ahead to this run last week when I was picking out a final speed workout, but I didn't. And then when this popped up as the final long run, I felt compelled to do this "as prescribed" last year (and in 2010 by Coach Jen, which is what I was "copying" last year for my workouts leading up to the TC 10 Mile).

The big difference in this workout ISN'T that it's only 6 instead of 8 reps, but it's that there's no true REST - it's still running MODERATELY between the efforts, so your heart rate never fully comes down. It sucks! Notice in the previous pic above (where I was running EASY between reps) that my HR ALWAYS came down well below the average HR of 159 between each rep (the white line). Now look at this workout from Monday where I was running MODERATELY between the reps and my HR stayed above the average of 162 after the 2nd rep through the rest of the efforts:

4 efforts "out" (starting around the northern-most point) and then 2 "back" that you can see.
Notice in between is more GREEN (moderate) compared to all the BLUE in Friday's workout above.

Like Friday, I couldn't get them anywhere near the speed of last year. Last year, my slowest opening 1/2 mile of the 6 reps was 2:49, and I was aware for this year's workout that my "moderate" reps from last year covered around 0.46 miles (around 6:30-6:40 pace). This year, I finished the first 1/2 mile of each 3:00 effort right around 3:00, and my "moderate" reps covered around 0.43 miles.

Overall, the "guts" of this workout covered about exactly 6 miles back in 2010, 6.01 miles last year, and only 5.58 miles this week. That's a difference in pace of 6:01/mile last year, and 6:29/mile this year. Yikes. I don't like seeing how much slower that is on paper compared to last year!

I just added the upcoming TC 10 Mile race to my Garmin account, and it asked for a goal. I'm really uncertain what I can do. I'll have a quick post about that this weekend (after a "week in review" later this week and then some "Friday Funnies").