8K fartlek - 39 second PR!

Today's workout went fabulously well. I felt great, I was fast, and I felt strong for the whole thing. I needed the confidence boost, as I've been feeling a bit sore, slow, and even a little discouraged since the marathon.

The weather was quite nice, at 44F (6.7C), calm, and partly cloudy. I wore capris and a long-sleeved shirt, and wore gloves and a jacket for my warm-up. After a short warm-up (I was running late) of 1200m, I discarded the jacket and started the workout. I felt very strong for the first 3K (5:29.9, 2:56.7, 2:46.7, 3:00.2, 2:47.2) and realized that I was on track for a huge 5K fartlek PR. I then started to worry that I'd gone out too fast, and kept thinking that I'd fatigue and have to slow down a lot, but it never happened. I got to 3K in 17:01, and 5K in 28:38 - wow, that 28:38 is just 2 seconds off my previous track PR. Like I said, I thought I'd fatigue, but I didn't, and my fast 500s were all 2:48 or less. My recoveries were all from 2:56-3:04. Total time: 46:13, and yes, that's 39 seconds faster than my previous PR for this workout (46:52).

I'm really happy with this workout, obviously, and hoping that I didn't go so hard that I won't be able to do my 10km tomorrow and 20km on Saturday. I have no idea what my heart rate was, because my heart rate monitor is worse than useless at the moment - the graph of my HR is all over the place. I really need to call Garmin and get a new one, but I keep forgetting. It's hard to keep track of things for the whole family (for example, I forgot to send my kids to school with their forms for their school pictures today, and had to drive back over there with them later). Anyway, I digress. I'm not feeling terribly sore now (a few hours later, at lunch time), and hopefully I'll stay feeling pretty good.

Garmin connect data here.

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Edited to add: Forgot to post yesterday, but I did 30 min on the elliptical, some weight training and core with Lisa, and then I biked to work. A good cross-training day.