Refreshing Friday Run

I don’t often do speedwork.  I have been legitimately scared of it for some reason.  I run lots of hills and use that as my speedwork.  My other MO is to go out for a run and if I’m feeling it, I will speed up and do a tempo run.  Sometimes that makes for weird splits on my runs, because I will start out really slow and then when I get the high, I start going faster and faster, sometimes I finish up over a minute faster on my last split than I was on my first or second one.  So, essentially I trick myself in to speedwork by not actually calling it that.  It’s kind of like how my kids hated green bean casserole when they were little, but after I changed the name to tater tot casserole, they suddenly loved it!  (I do shudder at the thought that I actually made such dinners at one point in my life.)

When I was training for my marathon, I really didn’t do any speedwork except hills.  I got very worn down during my training since it was my first marathon, and I only had it in me to get the runs in, and I stopped fretting about trying to combine intervals, etc. with my training plan.  When I began the training, I thought all the advice I heard about just doing the first marathon to finish and not worrying about speed, etc. was a little overkill.  I figured since I have a few years of running under my belt I would be a little more advanced for marathon training.  Not so, my friends.

Then I tapered for the marathon, ran the marathon, and sort of reverse tapered.  I am almost 3 weeks post marathon and feeling good.  I feel recovered and I am putting in mileage again.  It feels good!

I went out today for a 5 miler.  I planned to do some intervals.  I have never used my watch (Garmin 610) to plan intervals before, so I thought I would try it out.  I made up my own plan, and did a 1 mile warm up, then 3 minutes faster than 5k pace, and then 5 minutes of rest in between.  I did 5 intervals, and ended up running my 5 miles for the day.  It felt so amazing to run fast!  It has been awhile since I ran anything close to 5k pace, and it felt good to kick it up and run hard.   I loved that my watch notified me when my intervals were up.  I will probably play around with it more and try lots of different scenarios for intervals.  I was tired when I got home, but also energized.

I signed up for a half marathon in January, so I am going to run hard the next couple of weeks and then do the half.  It’s a local one, the Cascade Half Marathon.  It’s insanely expensive for a local fun run ($45, but there is a t-shirt) , and in January so the weather is unpredictable.  It’s also a flat and not very scenic course.  But hey, it’s a half marathon!  I am excited to run it, because the only half marathons I have done are one that I ran/walked with my daughter, and then a trail half marathon as part of my marathon training.  So I really don’t have a road half marathon time established for myself.  It should be fun to see what I can do.  I’m thinking I will be somewhere between 2:05 and 2:15, we’ll see if my predictions are correct.

Tagged: half marathon, half marathon training, interval training, intervals, marathon, Marathon Training, Running