10K fartlek

When I woke up, I felt pretty recovered from my 25K on Sunday. I had just a touch of residual soreness in the left glutes/top of hamstrings, but otherwise felt good. The weather was favorable too, at 68F (20C) and about 35% humidity. Ahhhh, if only I could have weather like this in the winter too. I love summer here, and I'll be sad to see it go. Meanwhile, I'll enjoy it while it lasts.

I drove to the track and it was a bit crowded, but not too bad. The running club was there, but there were only about 6-7 of them, including my boss. That's always a bit of a shock to see him; I know he works out with them, but it's still kinda funny to see him at the track instead of at work. There were also 3 buff triathlete women there (they were there last week too) for a session with their coach. Still, it seemed we could share the track, and it worked pretty well mostly. I moved aside into lane 2 for people when warming up (I did 1600m in 9:56, with some strides) but then when I started my fartlek I stuck to lane 1 and they just had to pass me. I tried to move as far inside as I could to make it easier, and there were no rails on the track, so it worked OK. About halfway through my workout, the football team showed up for practice. A bunch of them actually sat in lane 1, and I asked nicely for them to move aside when I went by. They did, and so I was able to use lane 1 despite the runners, triathletes, and football team :).

My workout went well. I felt really good and tried hard not to push too much. I stayed comfortably hard or hard for the whole workout and did not go all-out. I did push a bit on the last two fast sections, but not too hard. My ave HR for the workout was 159, a bit lower than usual, so I know I had a bit in reserve.

The best part about this workout was that I was really consistent. My first km was 5:38, and after that my fast sections were all 2:49-2:54, with one 2:55. My medium segments were mostly 3:03-3:08, with one 2:58 (!) and one 3:01, and the last 4 mediums all the same at 3:08. I'm a bit amazed I held the pace so well on those, especially at the end of the workout when I was tired. And yeah, I did the last fast one in 2:49 :).

Total time 59:24 (only one second slower than my PR for this workout), ave HR 159, and ave pace 5:56/km. Not bad. Not bad at all. Other splits: 3K in 17:22, 5K in 29:18, 6K 35:18, 8K 47:22.

The hard part now will be doing 20K tomorrow. Yup, that's right...coach has me down for 20K. I'm a bit nervous about how it will go; I'm slightly stiff now and a little sore but hopefully with some stretching I'll be good to go tomorrow. I hope I can get up early enough to get it done before work.

Garmin connect data here.