Total time of 43:24 for today's run. I'm not sure about the distance because I only measured one section of the run on the course tool, and not the entire thing.
During this past week I ran between 42-43 min per day. I ran some short speed workouts on Tuesday and Thursday, mixing short sprints into the run on Tuesday, and running 7 x 1 min hard with 4 min rest (yes I know that the rest was probably longer than needed) on Thurday while running with the stroller. I had a few runs during the week where my legs felt pretty snappy, so my runs this week were probably a little faster on average than is the norm for me.
Today I ran 2 x 10 min hard with a 5 min recovery between reps. My goal was to be able to run strong during the second rep and not feel like my legs were turning into jello. So, I made a point of trying to keep my pace more conservative during the first rep. Originally I was only going to have a 3 minute recovery between reps, but I ended up in an area where my second rep was going to have substantial uphill, so I lengthened the recovery to try and get to higher ground so that I could have more of a mix of uphill and downhill.
Unfortunately I misjudged the length of the initial hill that I was running up. I started my second rep at 25:00, expecting to be at the top of the hill within a minute or two, followed by a flatter stretch for a few minutes with net downhill, one more steep hill for about a minute, and then a steep downhill from there to the finish, and boy did I remember things wrong! It took me approximately three minutes to make it to the top of the hill (0.41 miles with 125 ft elevation gain, almost 6% average grade), and by the time I turned onto the "flat" street my legs already were feeling like jello even though I was not even running under 7:00 mile pace.
Once I turned onto the "flat" street I realized that it had more rolling hills than I remembered previously even though my recollection of a net downhill was accurate. Even with the net downhill on that stretch I was struggling to maintain pace and switch gears due to the uphill that was thrown in. By the time I crested the second steep hill around 7:00 into the rep my legs were thoroughly trashed, only for me to then to come to a realization that I still had some more rolling hills (and a net elevation gain) before I finally started to head back downhill. By the time I finally started to run down the final steep downhill (approx 7:40 into the rep) my legs were so trashed that I couldn't actually push myself enough to feel like I was running hard. The road was so steep (One stretch of approx .14 miles had a negative grade of over 11%) that I was still running sub 6:00 pace during the downhill stretch which covered the last 0.6 miles of the repetition (5:50 average with average negative grade of close to 5%, with approx 150 ft elevation drop), but I never felt like I was running hard during the last 3.5 minutes it took me to get back to Main street. Total distance for the final rep was 1.71 miles covered in 11:12 (aveage pace approx 6:33) with approximately 0 net elevation change (course tool said -2 ft net change).
I then finished running back to the house, arriving around 39:30 into the run. I felt so rotten that I considered stopping for a few minutes to rest for a few minutes before finishing the last 3.5 minutes of the run. Ultimately I just decided to keep my legs moving, and by the time I hit 41:00 my legs were feeling a fair amount better, so I was happy that I didn't stop and was able to finish my run.
So in sum, I felt a little disappointed in how the workout turned out because I was trying to take it easier early on so that I could finish stronger. Even at the beginning of the last rep I was making an effort to not kill myself on the uphill, but the grade was so steep that just running at any pace will get my heart rate elevated, so I am trying not to be too critical. I am hopeful that I will eventually get to the point again where I can perform workouts like this and not feel like I am killing myself.
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