My First Shot at Some Speed Work

This morning I woke up early before class to get in my first speed work run. I have never done speed work before so I was pretty nervous. I was very excited though. I like being challenged so I was excited to see what I could bust out.

I have heard about Yasso 800's from Emily and Christine, and because of my lack of knowledge of speed work I decided to give them a try. I only wanted to do two repeats this week, and then maybe bump up to three repeats next week.

Unfortunately, I do not have access to a track so I decided to just find my own course. The road near my apartment is exactly a half mile so I figured I could do my repeats there. The downfall is that it is not flat.

I did a half mile warm up at 10:56 pace and then the real workout started. I initially was planning on doing the repeats downhill but changed my mind last minute to do them uphill. It was a good thing I switched to uphill because my knee was really hurting on the downhills.

I did my first repeat in 3:58 for a 7:55 pace. I have never run under an 8:00 min/mile pace so I was pretty excited to see a number sub 8. My knee was really achy when running downhill so I ended up walking a little on the recovery jogs. I figured walking is better than pain, right?

I wanted to really push the second repeat but my time wasn't much faster than the first. I ran it in 3:55 for a 7:51 pace. Ultimately I was happy with these times but I definitely look forward to pushing myself more next time and seeing what kind of times I can produce.

Overall I ended up running 2.5 miles at a 10:04 pace. Even though this was a hard workout I really enjoyed it. I can't wait for next week and to see how my speed progresses over the next few months.

Do you do speed work? Do you love it or hate it?