10K w/2x7' @20K race pace

This morning's workout was 10K w/2x7' @20K race pace. The weather was awesome. It's finally nice here, though it could still snow, cold rain, etc. But at least this week is supposed to be nice! It was 40F (4C) and calm and clear.

I started off fast on the 2K downhill to Liberty Park. Once in the park, at 2K, I did my first 7-min race pace interval. It's more or less flat for that, w/slight downhill on the N end of the park. That kicked my HR up but not too high; about 150ish. My 500m splits were right on at 3:00 and 2:58 and then I continued fast for another minute. Then to keep my speed decent while recovering - this is a deceptively tricky workout as I learned last week! During my first recovery interval I passed a woman walking 4 small yippy dogs with a friend of hers. They were taking up the entire 2m width of the sidewalk - I yelled "On your left!" but she didn't hear...grrrrr!

I kept things reasonably fast, despite the fact that everything is a bit sore from yesterday's 10K fartlek. Hamstrings & glutes particularly, but my right shin is also sore - weird, since my shins are almost never sore. My muscles may have been tired, but that didn't seem to hurt me too much today.

At 6.5km I did my next 7' race pace burst. I did 500m splits of 2:57 and 2:57 (and got stopped by traffic for 30 sec or so during the 2nd one, about 47 min into the workout, hence the HR decel there; also got stopped at the light at 700E coming and going and those are the big decels on the HR trace, but they were not during my speed bursts) plus 1:06 more fast to make 7'. I still felt pretty good and was able to get up the slight hill to 10K pretty decently; slowest 500m up the hill was 3:13.

Total time 1:02:13 for the 10K, 6:13/km w/ave HR 145. Pretty good! Much better than last week, even after the hard 10K fartlek yesterday.

Garmin connect data here.