I continued my last-minute race training by doing an interval workout on the treadmill today to help me work a bit on getting faster. I warmed up, then did 4 of these, then a cooldown– I usually don’t give speed numbers here (mostly cause I am slow as heck!) but here they are, just to give you an idea. Curiously, I wound up doing about the same overall pace as my slow-but-nonstop run on Monday.
1 minute at 4.5mph (slowish ‘normal’ pace for me)
2 minutes walking, 3.5mph (replaced by 2 minutes at 4.5 first rep)
2 minutes at 4.5mph
5 minutes at 5.5mph
The fast intervals were hard, but that’s the point of an interval workout right? If it’s easy I need to go faster. :) I definitely notice a difference in my legs after focusing on working my quads during my lifting workouts. Today I wore my nearly-barefoot shoes, which often leave me sore in the calves, but I could adjust my stride to use the big muscles and that helped me have more endurance.
I really enjoy intervals. There’s just something about making that big push to get to the end that feels really good. It’s a bunch of small victories.
Running While Fat 