Thursday, December 13, 2012

8K fartlek

I'm loving our warm weather! It was 44F (6.7C) this morning with a bit of a breeze. So warm for December. But it IS dark. Kelly and I met at the track at 5:45 am, and it was still pitch-black dark when we left at about 6:55 am. I wonder how people who live in far northern climates deal with the winter darkness, because it would drive me crazy. I do have a touch of seasonal affective disorder, but that seems to be well-managed with a low dose anti-depressant. All the same, I'm grateful for any sunlight I can get!

We were a little late getting started, so we did a 1200m warm-up instead of 1600m, and I did throw in a couple 100m fast on the last lap. After some dynamic drills we got started, and I tried to be sure and pace myself well. I felt like I did a pretty good job of that, doing 5:29 for the first km. My medium effort 500s were all 2:55-2:59 except for one 3:00 and one 3:01 (the last two), while my hard effort 500s were all 2:45 or 2:46 except the last two, which were 2:48 and 2:47. I did feel tired on the last two, but not terribly so. It was a good hard effort.

Kelly had to stop after 5K (which we reached in 28:23) because her hip was bothering her; she thinks it's because her ankle/foot is still a bit sore from when she rolled it last Monday and her gait is a bit off because she is compensating. I told her to stop if it didn't get better, because there's no point in killing yourself to finish a workout if it's going to create injury problems later. 5K of speed work is better than none, and better than 8K plus missing a week or two due to injury.

I'm pretty sore now and sleepy, too. Definitely feel those hard workouts!

Total time: 45:41 with average HR 160. It's not as fast as some workouts I did last fall but it's still a fast time. Kelly was watching my right knee from 5K-8K and said it looked good, so that's a relief.

Garmin data here.

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