I dragged myself out of bed at 10 'til 6 this morning for my Monday run. I didn't want to get up but made myself do it anyway. On today's agenda was two repetitions of run 90 seconds, walk 90 seconds, run 3 minutes, walk 3 minutes. I've been somewhat dreading the 3 minute run because I remember from doing this before that this is where it started to get pretty hard.
The first 90 seconds was a breeze and I was barely breathing harder than I would during a brisk walk. I spent the next 90 second walk trying to tell myself that 3 minutes was just two 90 second runs back to back and that it would be no problem. At the 90 second mark, I was ready for a walking break, but I convinced myself to push on through it and made it to 3 minutes followed by a much needed 3 minute walking break. The next repetition was more of the same, only harder because my body was still feeling the 3 minute run. The last 30 seconds of the second 3 minute run seemed to drag on forever. I found myself running faster out of both habit and the desire to be done sooner. I think my oxygen deprived brain thought I could make time speed up by running faster. It didn't work but I did run the three full minutes and was really huffing by the end.
I didn't go quite as far today as I had been going last week. I went 2 miles in 28:45. That's about 14:23/mile. I slowed my pace significantly today. I also realized that I had been doing 7 sets of 90 second runs/walks last week instead of 6. This week, I'm actually reducing my total time by 3 minutes so my distance will also go down. I'm not sure if that's by design or I did one more set per day last week than the program calls for. No big deal. Either way, I ran 3 full minutes without stopping today. Twice!
The rest of this week is the same routine. Hopefully by Friday the 3 minute runs get a little easier because those are the short runs in next week's routine.
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