Emily's training blog

I met the East High kids down at Liberty Park for a tempo run this afternoon. I figure if I can find enough babysitters to let me get some group runs in, it would really help my fitness and maybe I can help some of them out, too. 

I warmed up two miles and the tempo was supposed to be 6 miles at 6:05-6:10 pace.  The wind was a little nasty, and made it difficult to keep the pace even.  I was kind of all over the place with my run.  Our first 3 miles were too fast, and then the wheels started to fall off in the 4th mile.  At mile 4 my chest started to pound really hard.  I drank a vitamin water before practice, and I think it had some "energy" supplements in it.  So, I stopped there to get some breath back.  Then, I felt guilty for stopping, so jogged half a mile, and caught Natalie with a mile to go.  I paced her through the last mile.  So, my workout was 4 miles of tempo and a mile repeat.  I have some building to do, and no more vitamin water before workouts.

After the tempo, we met "Cool Carl" who kissed each of the girls' hands, and then gave us a martial arts demonstration.  It was creepy.

I met the East High distance kids at the oval for a speed workout. Normally, I wouldn't run a speed the day after a tempo, but I felt surprisingly good after yesterday. I wanted a workout that was consistently under 5:20 pace, which I haven't done much of lately. The workout was 2 x 800 followed by 2 sets of 5 x 300, with 100 jog between each interval, and a one lap jog between the sets. We ran a 400 jog between the 800's.

We started with an 8 lap warm-up, followed by 4 laps of speed changes.

My 800's were both 2:36.77. How's that for consistency. I wanted to go for 55-57 seconds on the 300's but found myself working to push Natalie, who was supposed to run 52-54 seconds on the 300s.

Set 1: 54, 53.25, 53.07, 52.73, 53.88

Set 2: 52.94, 53.77, 53.21, 53.40, 52.59.

I haven't moved that quickly in a very long time. It sure makes a difference when you are chasing down speedy high schoolers.

We cooled down 5 laps to give us 10 for the workout. This was a far cry from the 2:45 400's I was running a couple of weeks ago. I'm hoping sub-5:30 pace will start to feel more comfortable soon.

My legs are shot today. I'm definitely feeling yesterday's speed workout. My goal for today was to keep the pace easy, and the run relatively short. I felt nice an aerobic the whole run. I still have one more workout and a long run this week, so it's good to have a recovery day.

I'm still feeling Tuesday's workout, but it's starting to improve.  The weather would be absolutely perfect, except for that nasty Utah spring wind.  But, the sunshine is giving me spring fever.  I hope the next couple of days are nice. 

I ran out 4800S to the River Trail, south to Winchester, up to 1300W, to 5400S and home.  Nothing too exciting to report, except I ran the course 3 minutes faster than when I started back from my injury in December.   That's progress! 

I was feeling a lot better today. I wanted to do a fartlek workout, but wanted to make sure that I didn't work too hard since tomorrow is long run day.  I wanted it to be a progression, with a focus on endurance.  I already got the speed in this week. 

I warmed up 15 minutes, and then ran 11 sets of 3 minutes on/2 minutes off, starting at marathon (well, actually probably closer to half marathon pace right now) pace and increasing the pace every set until I reached 5k pace.  The 2 minute recovery was at 7:30 pace.  I started at 6 minute mile pace, and ended up at 5:24/mile pace, with the majority between 5:30-5:40.  Only the last 3 started to feel difficult.  I cooled down about 10 minutes to finish a 75 minute run.  Total distance for 75 minutes was 11.57 miles.

I just hit my first 60 mile week in a very long time. Now I feel like I'm training! I met Andrea on the river trail for a long run. I know we were supposed to go 7:30 pace, but somehow the pace kept dropping down. I still felt good, though a little tired from yesterday. I was happy that Andrea felt strong, too.  I'm very happy with this week's training.