Fartleks... fun word. I tried it this morning. I pushed myself pretty hard, but it felt good. First I did my warm up walk then ran at an easy pace (10:38/mile) for a mile. Then I ran hard for .15 mile, or about a minute. This was at between a 7 & 8 minutes/mile pace. I slowed back to the mid 10s for .15 mile., then repeated twice more. I was huffing and puffing by this point so I gave myself a .3 mile slow jog breather and did another rep of the .15 mile hard run, took a .5 mile slow jog breather and did another .15 mile hard run and then jogged at a sub-10:00/mile pace back to the car. It sure made my run seem to go by fast. I am enjoying adding some variety to my morning runs. Going out and doing 3 or 4 miles at a constant pace can get pretty dull.
With my next 5K just over two weeks away, I'm going to try to spend next week pushing myself pretty hard for speed improvement. I definitely want to beat my last 5K. I really want to finish in less than 30 minutes. Anything beyond that is gravy.
Today's Stats: I did 3.26 miles in 31:59 for an average pace of 9:49 - better than my last race pace by a second per mile.
Next up: I'll be swimming in the morning. I'm trying to decide whether to run Friday or Saturday this week.
What's in store for the future: I'm to the point where I don't think I need to take two days in a row off but that throws my schedule off kilter. I was thinking of running M&W, then doing a shorter run for speed work on Fridays and then a longer run on Saturday morning. The problem with that is, I want to get three days of swimming and at least 3 days of running in every week. I could go to a run MWF/swim TRS routine but that still puts me taking Saturday and Sunday completely off of running. I think my swimming is progressing a little slower than I would like because I'm only getting two good swims in a week. I want to work up to a good swimming base so that when I get my bike I won't be hurting my swimming progress too badly by replacing a swim workout with a bike workout. Also, at some point after acquiring a bike I'll need to find a way to work in some swim/bike bricks and some bike/run bricks to increase my endurance and also work out transitional bugs. Those will probably have to be reserved for Saturdays.
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