A Lean and Hungry Look

Easy 6 on new loop.  20th E to 21st E to Parley's Canyon under freeway to Stratford to 17th E to 17th S to 16th E to Emerson to 17th E and back home through the neighborhood.  Exactly 6, so it might be a nice alternative to the Sugarhouse loop that is getting a little old.  Felt good today.

AHR 159

10x3-min intervals at Sugarhouse Park.  Target was around 5:30-5:40.  All but one or two of the intervals involved one of the two hills at the park, and every time I felt sapped by the time I reached the top.  Although it tends to hurt my splits, I still prefer to incorporate hills into my interval workouts because I think it helps me mentally when I encounter terrain in a race setting.  Enough philosophy.  Here are my splits:

1. 5:35/mi (166 bpm)

2. 5:36/mi (172 bpm)

3. 5:41/mi (175 bpm)

4. 5:56/mi (175 bpm)

5. 5:45/mi (177 bpm)

6. 5:37/mi (178 bpm)

7. 5:27/mi (175 bpm) (I think this was the first one without a hill)

8. 5:47/mi (177 bpm)

9. 5:48/mi (175 bpm)

10. 5:59/mi (174 bpm) (the long hill in the NEC of the park came about 2:00 in and wiped me out)

Looking back at my HR for the workout, I think I may have been overly cautious in my pacing.  I should have been closer to 180 bpm, especially in the final 3-4 intervals.  I was nervous that I would pop after 6 or 7 intervals, since I hadn't done more than 6 3-min intervals before today.  Although I was tired at the end, I have felt far worse in speed sessions over the past several weeks.  I had more to give, so I'll try to give more in my next interval workout.

Scheduled day off.

Took Kaela to an early violin lesson and couldn't drag myself out of bed at 4:45 in order to fit my scheduled run in before the lesson.  Fortunately, she moves to a summer schedule after this week that won't conflict with my running schedule.  The lesson went great, by the way.

10 miles with 8 at HMP effort.  Drove 2 miles from my house into Emigration and parked the car.  It was cold up there--probably in the low 40's.  Should have brought arm warmers and light gloves.  Oops.  Ran 4 miles up with last 2 miles at a target HR of no higher than 173.  I was slightly higher than that even though the splits were only 7:00 (172 bpm) and 7:33 (174 bpm).  Effort didn't feel hard, but HR was high.  I don't know why.  At turnaround point, I rested, walked, and stretched for 5-7 minutes before starting the fast downhill section.  Target was to stay under 5:55.  Splits were as follows:

Mile 5: 5:45 (167 bpm)

Mile 6: 5:48 (174 bpm)

Mile 7: 5:53 (175 bpm)

Mile 8: 5:46 (177 bpm)

Mile 9: 5:36 (179 bpm)

Mile 10: 5:21 (181 bpm)

I felt much better than on my Emigration run last Saturday.  The brisk temperature may have contributed to that, along with the fact that my ipod worked this time.  I prefer not to race with music, but it seems to help me pull a little more out of myself on some of my harder training runs, so I'll probably keep doing it, at least until I feel like I can hit my targets consistently without the help of music.  The effort felt good.

I started out planning to do my scheduled long run (12 miles with 10 at MP), but after my first mile of tempo I could tell that another 9 at tempo wasn't in the cards, so I turned it into a 6-mile recovery run instead.  Yesterday's tempo run was great but probably took more out of me than I realized.  I'll have to do my long run early tomorrow instead.