V02 max intervals: 9 miles w/6 x 800 m @ 5K race pace; jog 50 to 90% interval time between. 5:59 am, 38°F, 80% humidity, wind 9 SSE. I stayed up late watching The Blind Side last night and so it was hard to get out of bed this morning, even though I got up an hour later than I would have had to if my husband weren't on spring break this week. I think maybe the hardest thing for me about training for a marathon is not the running itself so much as the getting up early nearly every ding dong day. I took a 3 mile route to the middle school track, even though the track is only about a half mile from my house, and ran the intervals on the track. I did a little more than a lap of jogging between each repeat. On each rest lap I went a little beyond the starting point and then turned around and accelerated up to the starting point and hit the lap button as I passed the starting point. I think I saw Michelle and Michelle turning from Cresthill Lane onto Gleneagles when I was doing the rest lap after the 2nd repeat. They were too far away for me to be absolutely sure or to call out to them. As I was finishing up the last repeat, kids were starting to arrive at the middle school. As I crossed through the green belt from the track into my neighborhood to do my cool down, I crossed paths with my own son on his way to school. He gave me a high five. According to the McMillan calculator, based off of my recent Canyonlands time, my 5K race pace should be 7:11, though I severely doubt that I could run a 5K at that pace, at least not in Highlands Ranch. In any case, that was my target pace for the repeats. With that said, here are my stats: Splits before the repeats: 10:22, 9:39, 9:32.
Pace for each repeat with pace for following rest lap in parentheses: 7:12 (9:38), 7:06 (9:18), 7:13 (9:29), 7:19 (9:22), 7:15 (9:44), 7:06.
Splits after the repeats: 9:43, 0.53 @ 9:26. I felt ready to stop after the fifth repeat, so I took it a little slower on the rest lap and then eeked out one more repeat. In other news, my husband complained about my "slave to the plan" blog title this morning, so I had to change it.
| 