Speed days are days that I continue to dread. I don’t have confidence that I can actually do what the plan calls for and I am afraid of failing at it. This is the reason most of my speed sessions are done in the afternoon; those thoughts make me not want to get out of bed to run. Eventually I did get out of bed and I headed to the gym later in the afternoon. Like usual there was no one in there so I was able to get my favorite treadmill.
The Nike plan said to do one mile at an easy pace, then a three mile fartlek where four minutes were at a faster pace and then one minute was at a slower, steady pace. After that I was to do a 2 mile light cool-down for a total of six miles. Now here is what I actually did. I increased the speed of the treadmill until it reached ten minutes per mile pace. This treadmill is really old, so it takes a little bit of time to increase even though I kept the up button pressed down. After three laps I decreased the speed a bit and then gradually brought it back up to ten by the end of the fourth lap. What was interesting was that it said I competed the first mile in 10:15, which shouldn’t have been the case because I had decreased my speed the last lap and I didn’t start running at a ten minute pace right away. So the treadmill is inaccurate and all of my paces were probably off, so I don’t know how fast I was actually traveling.
For the three mile Fartlek I did what the plan said. My fast pace was around 7:30-8:00 according to the treadmill and my slower pace was between 9:30-10:00. I took note of the times and subtracted the first mile and it showed that I had an average pace of 8:06 during those three miles. I am very happy with that average because that is faster than my race pace. After those miles I did 2.2 cool down miles ( I wanted an even 10k), but I may have done them faster than I should have. After the hard part of the workout I just wanted to leave the gym and go take a shower, so I ran at a faster pace to get done sooner. The total 6.2 miles took 55:18. After the workout I felt great and my legs felt fatigued making me think I got a great workout in. I am ready for some easy miles tomorrow!
After a great hard workout!
A Princess in Training 