Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Intervals In the Sunshine

What a contrast to yesterday! A beautiful sunny day to go running. I set off for my warmup into the wind which meant it was going to be behind me doing my intervals, which feels like cheating. I did wonder if I should have put my gloves on as the wind was cold but the 20 minute warm up passed quickly and I was stood outside the entrance to the pier ready to start the hard work.

I set off on my first interval.....then jogged back to where I started as I forgot to restart my watch. I set off again and with the sun out and wind behind me I was soon boiling, sleeves up, ears out and I was glad I hadn't put gloves on or my fleecy lycra leggings on. Two minutes later I jogged for recovery and then headed off again. I paced myself pretty well, only on the third one did I start to overdo it a little but I reigned myself in.

I did five and was going to leave it there but I stopped to have a look at the view as the visibility was amazing today. My heart rate dropped right down and I calculated a sixth interval would take me to the end of Fairhaven Lake where I turn to head back to work so I did a sixth one, which finished things off nicely.

The run back to work was ok but I was running into the wind again, by the time I got back to work my ears were freezing!

3 comments:

  1. how hard are you running during the interval? are you really out of breath? i have never been very successful at doing these sessions, so any tips gratefully recieved

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  2. Glad they went well, you are running strong at the moment which is good.

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  3. I'm reasonably out of breath, particularly on the last couple. Its hard to say but I've done them wrong in the past by doing all out sprints and all sorts of other daft things. Its a hard effort level for me but something I know I can keep going at so as I don't have the Garmin at the minute to give me pace info I try to keep my HR between 170 and 175. With the Garmin I'll try to the longer ones around my best 10k race pace (about 8:20mm). I have also learned to take it really easy on the warmup/warm down now as well.

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