Faster 5K: Week 1, Day 4

It was a cold and windless morning.  Okay, there was a slight breeze, and running right into was painful, but that just didn't have quite the same ring to it.  Let's try it.  It was a cold and painfully breezy morning.  Okay, that's not really so bad.  The morning was cold and the wind stung like a thousand tiny ice needles trying to pierce every exposed piece of flesh.  : )

Suffice it to say it was cold and there was a slight north breeze.  As I ran, I warmed up and didn't notice it as much, though, so it wasn't a major factor.  Today's routine was the same as my previous three runs.  I did 15 reps of 1:00 at approx 10/mile and 1:30 at approx 12/mile.  I did the whole thing without skipping any of the faster runs this morning.  I have a hard time keeping a constantly steady pace and several of my faster runs dropped down to around 9:40/mile while most of my slower runs never got as slow as 12:00/mile.  I just tried to run at a pace that seemed generally comfortable.  I did run slower for the slow segments and faster for the fast segments, of course.   

Reading back over my thoughts from the first couple of weeks of C25K I think I'm feeling about the same now as I was then.  While this new routine is definitely pushing me, it's pretty easy for the first half or so, and then gets progressively more difficult as I push towards the end.  Being able to do the entire routine this morning as I designed it was a good feeling.  I think I'm going to take the weekend off and then move on to the week 2 routine on Monday.  I'll increase my faster runs to 1:30 and increase my recovery runs to 2:00 and will do a total of 11 reps which will only increase my total running time by a minute.

Today's Stats:  I did 3.43 miles in 37:30 for a pace of 10:56.  It's good to see another sub 11 minute pace and it's faster than I thought I would be after just the first week.  Averaging out how I had written the plan I should be doing 11:07/mile, but I've beat that time twice.  With a 5K coming up in less than a month I'm starting to get a feel for what I think my time will be, and I'm hoping for something in the 33-34 minute range. 

Next up:  Faster 5K, week 2, day 1 on Monday.  Swimming?  Who knows?  Depends on how ambitious I feel next week.