Brutal 40 minute tempo

I like the Higdon intermediate 5k training plan, and use that to organize my workouts. It’s a 2 month plan that increases in difficulty. This year, I don’t have 2 months to train before my annual benchmark 5k, I have 1 month. So I’m using the same plan, but just the second half of it– meaning I jump right into really tough speedwork. Like today’s 40 minute tempo run.

This is made more difficult by the fact that I don’t have a good handle on how hard I can push my pace right now– what is "comfortably hard"? I think this one definitely crossed over into "uncomfortably hard"– not necessarily a bad thing from a training perspective, but I am pooped.

40 minute tempo
10 minute warmup (~11’00")
20 minute work (between 9’30" and 8’00")
10 minute cruise (~10’00")

My idea was to gradually increase the speed in the work interval, as I find turning up the treadmill is a good motivator. That went okay for the first 10 minutes but I definitely went well beyond my aerobic threshold (so much wheezing!) and had to back off some. Still, I managed to do better than 10’00" over the 40 minutes. I think I turned over 5k by 29:30 so maybe I’ll set my sights on 29:00 for the race.

Also the results from the powerlifting competition are in and… I won. It wasn’t a terribly competitive competition, and my total was ~200lb more than any of the other women (9 of us competed though, which was pretty cool). Maybe I can motivate someone to get under the bar to beat me next year, the way I was motivated :)

I also had my annual review with my boss (went very well, apparently I’m a borderline rockstar?) and I had a breakthrough on a very stubborn project. So everything’s coming up me so far this week. I don’t trust it one bit, and I suspect I’m going to get food poisoning or be hit by a car or something.

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