Threshold Run - 2 miles easy, 2 x 15 min. @ half-marathon pace/10K pace w/1 min. active recovery, 2 miles easy. 30-Day Shred Level 1 41°F, 82% humidity, winds calm. Since I struggled so much with the hills and the wind last time I did a workout like this, I decided to try it out on the track this time. I went to the Middle School track, which is about 1/4 mile from my house, but I ran a 2 mile out-of-the-way route as a warm up to get there. I actually kind of liked running this on the track. It made it easy to keep track of my pace without using the Garmin's pace calculation. My target for the first interval was 8:00 pace, which equated roughly to 2 minutes per lap. I checked the time on my watch at each lap to make sure I stayed on pace and I actually managed to run 8:00 pace, according to my Garmin. I ran almost exactly 7 1/2 laps in the first interval and the Garmin says 1.87 miles. My target for the second interval was 7:45 pace, and I knew from the first lap that I was going a little faster than that, but I just kept up the same pace that I had in the first lap. I knew what my time should be at the end of each lap and I just kept getting increasingly below that time. I ran just barely more than 8 laps during the second interval. The Garmin says 2.01 miles @ 7:28 pace. A person (I couldn't tell whether it was a man or woman) and a dog showed up on the track during my second interval. They were taking a leisurely stroll in the inside lane. I lapped them 3 times. I was running in the inside lane and so I had to go out around them. I was a little annoyed that they didn't move into an outside lane. They left the track shortly before I did and I actually passed them one more time on the trail during my cool down. On the whole, I feel pretty good about today's run. I didn't mind running alone in the dark on the track and it was so much easier to maintain a steady pace on the track than it is on the road.
| 