Intervals - finally ran some speed

Day 427 - March 3, 2010

I had never done an interval workout on the road in the dark before tonight. After dinner (a very lite dinner) I went out for my run. The goal was to run easy for 4 minutes, then hard for 4 minutes, repeat. I chose a course of 6 miles and I was hoping to finish in just under 44 minutes. That equates to 5 easy hard cycles and a final 4 minute cool down. I ended up pushing the last two minutes of my cool down trying to beat the clock and ended up 5 seconds over. Not bad for a first attempt. All in all a good run and I think I can do it faster next time, hopefully before it gets dark.

One month until the Charlottesville 10 Miler!

After dinner, in the dark, in the rain

Tonight I just feel fortunate that I got out to run. A couple hour trip into C-ville turned into a 7.5 hour trip that involved dinner at Chili's (happy B-day Molly) and 3 hours trying to find just the right combination of toys, movies, books, and games to maximize the spending power of birthday gift cards. We were at Target long enough for the manager to offer me a red shirt and name tag.

After all of that, I had no idea how the run would go, and with the rain, I didn't want to end up walking home from too far away. So I stuck to a 1.3 mile loop and just ran it a few times and then ran a half lap to finish. That was enough to get me to 35 miles for the week and I should still be fresh enough for a long run tomorrow afternoon.

I guess I should mention (or at least I guess it is obvious) that I didn't run the 8k this morning. My challengers who tried to get me to run the race with them bailed when they saw the weather forecast and I wasn't disappointed. I can run in the rain here just fine and don't have to drive 45 minutes and pay $40 to do it. I'm not sure if I'll get a race in before the 10 miler in April or if I'll just wing it. I don't have any aspirations of a PR this year, so I'm not too worried about it.

Day 73 of running streak
Today's Run 4.6 miles (YTD 286.6 miles)
Today's Time 0:36:29 (YTD 37:05:41)

Running Streak - Day 69

Running after dinner usually doesn't work so well for me. All that sloshing and eventual cramping don't make for a great experience. But tonight, it wasn't so bad. I waited about two hours after eating and started out slow. I figured I could tough out 3.5 miles no matter how bad I cramped up. But the cramps never came and I felt like the running was pretty effortless. When I was about a minute from finishing I made a quick course correction to add on another mile. Much better than cutting a run short!