Mile Repeats & a Long Run

This weekend featured one pretty good run and one not so good run. At least they didn't both suck, right? Thanks to not having class on Friday's I was able to make the drive from Baltimore to York late Thursday afternoon and still have time to get to the track for an interval workout. I was nervous about doing two hard workouts so close to each other, but should have paid more attention to the two long-ish back to back runs over the weekend.

So Thursday's workout, great. Nailed it. On to Friday's track workout of mile repeats. Since I'd never done mile repeats before I was actually pretty excited to see what they were all about. So many people say they are the hardest kind of track workout but I think sprints are. I wasn't a sprinter when I swam and I'm not when it comes to running either. I like doing 400's and 200's but getting my legs to turn over that quickly is just flat out hard for me.

When I got to the track Saturday morning the only goal I had for this workout was to do it smartly. When I first started doing track workouts I would go out way too fast because track = sprint all out right? Wrong! I was hoping to keep them under 8:00 but had no idea what would actually be good splits. I did a slow warm up that left me hesitant about this all would go down and then got to work.

7:51

The first one felt really good and controlled. I actually loved that first one. It was nice to not go all out on the track but still be putting in some solid work.

7:44, 7:42

The next two were a bit harder but still felt pretty good. I was trying to pay attention to pacing these pretty evenly instead of going out too hard or slow and then ruining the repeat.

7:36

The funny thing about this one is that I thought I was running it so slowly while I was actually running it. I thought I was off pace and slowing down so I stopped checking my watch and just ran. I pushed significantly harder on laps 3 and 4 and clearly it payed off.

7:33

Last one! I wanted this to be my fastest of the day so I went out a little harder than I had been. I focused on even effort and finishing fast. I don't know what these should be at given my marathon goal but I'm pretty pleased with these. I probably could have gone a little faster in the beginning but I was sure toast by the end. Either way I got in 9 solid miles of work and did each repeat faster than the previous one.

Sunday's run was a completely different story. I started off slow and figured I would naturally speed up as the run goes on like normal. Nope, not this time. I was supposed to run for 90 minutes at an 8:45 pace but was barely holding a 9:45. I debated calling it quits on this run but I am not in a position to be skipping long runs with a marathon in 9 weeks.

This run was a mental struggle the entire time, and quite honestly my legs felt like they were running the last 10 miles of a 20 miler, not a regular 10 mile training run. I tried to ignore my slower pace and just finish the run. That's the most important thing. I ended up doing 10.4 miles in 1:41:17. One of the worst/slowest runs I've had all year. Bad runs happen to everyone so at least I got mine out of the way for awhile right?