Wonderful Intervals

Pretty much all the speedwork that I have done so far has either been random fartlek style while on my outside runs (nothing major though) or on the treadmill using a Nike workout (I really like Serena Williams Intervals). All the Nike workouts are half an hour long. Well, I was playing around with the Smart Coach on Runner’s World online earlier this week (I think I had it set for a goal 10K in 16 weeks?) Anyway, the interval training it had for my first week was 5 miles with 3x800 @ 4:50 with 400 jogs and warm-up/cool-down. So, since I had 4.5 on my schedule for today (and I hadn’t done any speedwork yet this week) I decided to give it a try…it felt GREAT!! Now don’t get me wrong – there were some times that it was really hard to keep pushing through the intervals, which were longer than I am used to. But by the end of the cool-down I was ready to keep going.

First of all, it is still really weird to me to say that running 4.5 miles felt great. Besides the fact that it was speedwork! And I did kinda want to keep going, but I stopped myself so I wouldn’t wear myself out too much…I want to make sure my long run this weekend goes as planned since I didn’t really have one last week. I have 7.5 on the schedule, but I am actually hoping to hit 8 miles. I have been feeling really good lately, so why not? My scheduled increases are pretty conservative after all.

I had an interesting neighbor this morning on the treadmills…well, there were actually a couple empty treadmills between us. He kept making crazy noises “argh” “grrr” and yelling “Come On!” I guess he was trying to push himself, but I have never seen anyone get that into it at the gym before! I could hear him and I had headphones on! I guess it was working, cuz he sure was running faster than me…