Speed Workout "Up North"

On Friday, Sarah, Henry, and I were 4 hours north of the Twin Cities picking up Charlie from Camp Widji where he had been backpacking for the previous 10 days. I got up early before we could pick him up and went for a hard run: 8 x 3 mins HARD then 3 mins EASY. That's a longer speed workout!

I headed out on a trail next to Hwy 169 as early as I could - it was still quite dark. Two deer watched me head out to the highway:

1 of 2 deer.


Dark trail that looks a LOT lighter because of the long exposure of my phone camera.


Out of town along the highway. Misty and nicely cool!

That last pic was after my first interval. I didn't want to run this as a "normal" out-and-back because that would mean running "out" nearly 5 miles, and I wasn't sure my calf would hold up for this workout - I didn't want to be a few miles from home and pull up lame. So I ran 3 intervals "out," then turned around and ran 3 "back" (totaling 6 out of the 8 I wanted to do), and then did another 2 as 1 out and 1 back. On a map, it looked like this:

Out, back, then a smaller out-and-back.

And yeah... there are a lot of splits on that map. My Garmin is set to half-mile splits, so my goal was to have a split around 2:40-something (for a half-mile), and then another split 10-20 seconds later when I hit 3:00.

I hit my goals decently. My first real uphill (that I FELT) was in the 3rd interval, and then I turned around and had a more downhill 4th interval. So the first half of the workout looked like this, with my opening 0.5 miles being 2:46, 2:42, 2:50, and 2:41:

2:46 + 0:15 = 0.55 (5:33 overall pace)
3:01 easy (0.37 miles, 8:10 pace)
2:42 + 0:18 = 0.56 (5:24 pace)
3:01 easy (0.36 miles, 8:19 pace)
2:50 + 0:10 = 0.53 (5:40 pace) UPHILL turnaround
3:01 easy (0.37 miles, 8:06 pace)
2:41 + 0:19 = 0.56 (5:25 pace) DOWNHILL heading back
3:00 easy (0.37 miles, 8:07 pace)

My 5th interval wasn't as mentally strong (my mind wandered), and I worked hard in this last half. I made the choice to take my "3:00 easy" before my 8th and final interval mostly flat after a downhill 7th interval so that when I turned around to start my final interval, it would be mostly uphill. No downhill. All suffer. All pain. All for the workout.

2:51 + 0:09 = 0.53 (5:44 pace)
3:00 easy (0.34 miles, 8:47 pace)
2:46 + 0:14 = 0.54 (5:34 pace)
3:00 easy (0.34 miles, 8:57 pace)
2:42 + 0:18 = 0.56 (5:24 pace) same as 1st effort
3:00 easy (0.34 miles, 8:51 pace)
2:53 + 0:06 = 0.52 (5:50 pace) PURPOSELY really uphill to pain myself
3:01 easy (0.33 miles, 9:02 pace) including about 0:30 of walking

So my last interval ended up being my slowest interval all day, but only because it was mostly uphill and NOT because I was dying. I mean, I WAS dying, but I had ran this pretty decently. Here's what some Garmin info looked like:

Pace and heart rate make sense!


Elevation. Not "hilly," but with some noticable bumps.


Here you can see where my intervals intersected with the hills.

So in that last pic, notice the same "bump" in interval 1, 6, 7, and 8. And the big flat line while starting the 8th... that's where I did my easy 3:00 on flatter trail so I'd only go UP in the 8th interval and not crest the hill and come down too like I did in the 1st and 6th.

Brighter trail around interval #5.


Just after finishing my final interval just outside of Ely. With wolf poop on the trail in front of me...


... BIG OLE' wolf poop!!


On a "cool down walk" along Chandler Mine which operated until 1942.


Being it's a former mine, the water drops off QUICK.

Comparing this to when Coach Jen first gave me this workout in 2010 (and then when I used this workout again in 2024 - the 2 years that I went sub-60 for the TC 10 Mile), I went a little farther in the first half of the workout last week (0.05 miles farther over the hard efforts) than compared to 2024, but then 0.04 shorter in the last half compared to 2024. Most of that worse 2nd half could have come from the uphill in the final interval. And I was running the "easy" efforts faster and covering more ground on those in both 2010 and 2024. Not bad for a hard workout, but would always like to be faster!

After this workout from Coach Jen, they stopped lining up well with my TC 10 Mile training timeline. So Monday's long run (8/24) was a workout that I did in 2024 aboout 3 weeks later in mid-September. I'm just trying to piece together some hard workouts while not killing my body!