easy Wednesday and hard Thursday

Yesterday I did 1.5 miles to warm-up for my weight training class and then did a nice set of weights and some abs. Nice easy workout.

Today I am feeling mostly better from my cold; a little residual congestion but definitely on the mend. So I decided to try a nice tough workout. I have been researching and plotting a good training schedule for the marathon, and Runner's World had a nifty advanced 12-wk schedule that incorporated some marathon pace intervals (long ones! like the 3k intervals some of the elites do, only it was in miles, so they are 2 mile intervals) along with some progression (acceleration) long runs. Really cool. I thought I'd try one of the 3x2 mile workouts and see how it was.

It was good and hard. I am still trying to decide what my goal marathon pace (MP) is. I am pretty sure I can do 10:40, but I would like to see if I can do 10:30/mile. Not sure that is realistic, but what the heck - I can try some workouts at that speed and see how I do.

Here was today's workout:
Warm-up 1 mile (downhill, 10:20, HR 136); then 3x2 mile @ 10:30 with 0.5 mile recovery inbetween. Splits: 10:23 (146 HR), 10:25 (149 HR), easy 0.5 in 5:55 (142 HR), 10:26 (150 HR), 10:24 (152 HR), easy 0.5 in 6:04 (142 HR), 10:20 (153 HR), 10:26 (154 HR). Easy 0.66 cool-down uphill in 8:37 (13:09/mile).

I was pretty tired at the end of this, and my HR was getting fairly high considering that it was a little less than 9 miles total (8.66 miles/13.94 km). But I also went about 5-10 seconds faster per mile that I was supposed to. I think if I can figure out how to actually hold a 10:30 pace it might work, but it might be a little on the ambitious side. We'll see. I did do a 10:32 pace for almost 4 miles on Tuesday with a heart rate of 142 average, which was considerably faster... some of it just depends on the kind of day you're having I guess.

It was fun to do this workout, though!