I am just pooped.
I woke up this morning anticipating a very hard run. 2 weeks until my olympic distance triathlon in Jacksonville (at camp blanding). I never thought this workout would be as hard as it was for 52 minutes. 52 minutes of sweating like crazy, my legs feeling like they will run away from me and breathing a bit heavier than I have in previous runs. But I loved every moment of it....well, now I do. At the moment...not so much. I kept asking myself "is this really what I have to do to get faster?" I think watching some recaps of the Olympics on the treadmill TV re-confirmed how hard you have to push your body if you want to see serious results.
I got the set from Karel's coach, Shawn, who owns Velocity Multisport coaching. He has some great blogs on his site http://vmscoaching.blogspot.com/
Shawn is training for Kona right now and putting in some serious hill work. Instead of doing the percent grades on the treadmill, I took some of his intervals and kinda made up my own set. Here is it:
10 min warm-up at 7.3 mph
5 x 40 sec pick-ups at 8.5 mph w/ 15 sec recovery
Main Set 3x's!!
1 min @ 9.5mph (5K pace)
2 min @ 8.9mph (10K pace)
3 min @ 8.5mph (HIM pace)
2 min walk @ 3.5mph (had to walk or else I would die)
2 min jog @ 7.5mph
Repeat set
5 x 40 sec pick-ups at 8.5 mph w/ 15 sec recovery
Cool-down
Total: 52 min, 6.5 miles
As you can see, there are NO rest breaks in the main set. That is why I had to walk after the set. I really thought I wouldn't get through the first set if I knew I had to keep running before the next set. The hardest part of the set was the 3 min @ 8.5mph. I kept looking at the time for each part of the main set and it was just an awful feeling when I would painfully see that I had 2:40 left at 8.5mph. But, I made it all and I feel a bit stronger.
I headed to the pool and did a short tempo swim. The yardage was short again but I will put in more time in the pool tomorrow morning.
500 warm-up
600 pace
300 pace
200 pace
100 pace
100 warm-down
Total: 1800 yards
As for the rest of my day, I will get some work done on the computer (did I mention I am LOVING not being in school right now!!!). Later today I take Karel to the airport for a clinic in Wisconsin at the Trek Corporation headquarters. He will be learning all about the new Treks, Trek concepts and other Trek stuff which will really help out his store. Maybe he will come back with some freebies as well...like a WSD Trek madonne for me???? :)