Monday Swim, Tuesday Run: 03/21 & 03/22/2011

After wimping out yesterday morning I decided to swim after work.  I was pretty tired so I made it an easy swim.  I did a few 50s, a couple 100s, all sandwiched around a 200 and left it at that.  I lost count of how many total yards I did, but I'm guessing it was around 1,000.  The water was cooler than it has been, which was very nice because the air inside the bubble was like a tropical rain forest.  Not my best swim, but not too bad.

This morning I did a tempo run which theoretically should increase my lactic acid threshold.  My goal was to run between 45-60 seconds slower than my most recent 5K pace.  Since I averaged 9:09/mile in my last 5K I was shooting for between 9:54 and 10:09 per mile.  That wasn't easy.  Not because it was fast, but because I found it hard to hold in that range.  I could easily maintain a faster pace or a slower pace, but for whatever reason that 15 second range had me flummoxed.  My Garmin pace chart looks like a seismograph reading.  I was much more comfortable running at around a 9:30 pace and my average pace per mile over the course of the run agrees with that.  My first mile was done in 9:41 and I had to fight to keep it that slow.  The second my was 9:51, though some of it was at a sub 9:00 pace and some of it was 10:30 or slower.  I just decided to do what was comfortable for the last 1.5 after fighting my own internal pacing for two miles.  The 3rd mile was done in 9:35 and I averaged 9:09/mile for the final .64. 

Today's Stats:  I did 3.64 miles in 35 minutes for an average pace of 9:37/mile.  My average heart rate was 154.

Next Up:  I'm planning a swim tomorrow, hopefully back to a normal routine.  Thursday will be the run that kicks my butt.  I'll be doing the following routine:

1 mile easy warm up - I'm aiming for 11:00/mile or so and then 10 X 400 yards at 5K pace minus 30 seconds followed by a rest period of half the time it took to complete the 400 yards.  400 yards is just slightly less than 1/4 mile.  I'll probably modify the plan to do 10 X 1/4 mile at 5K pace - 30 seconds.  That will be about 8:40/mile, or 1/4 of a mile will be completed in 2:10 and then I'll rest for 1:05...and then repeat 9 more times.  All of that will be followed by an easy mile to cool down.  That will end up being a total of somewhere around 5 miles.  I may cut out the last mile cool down depending on how I feel after the intervals.