Dipping into Intervals

This morning I woke up nice and early and hit the road at 5:30am for a nice run. It wasn't easy getting going as I felt a bit stiff, but as I ran along things slowly improved.

At about the 5km mark I found myself at the track and, like last Wednesday, I decided to do a little bit of "out of the comfort zone" training. This week I added an extra 800m repeat to the mix and increased the recovery to 400m from 200m.

Things went like this:

400m 1:47 (4:26/km)
400m rest 2:26
800m 3:32 (4:24/km)
400m rest 2:39
800m 3:29 (4:21/km)
400m rest 2:41
800m 3:25 (4:18/km)
400m rest 2:36
400m 1:42 (4:15/km)

Afterwards I ran around the track for a bit before heading home and completing my 15km run. It was not particularly easy, but it was not that hard either. Certainly I am nowhere near the puke threshold with my pacing on the repeats, and that is just fine right now. I know I can go a lot faster, I just am not willing to risk injury right now by running too fast. Also, if this looks suspiciously like the Yasso 800s it's because that is in my mind as a basis for interval training. I should be going a lot slower on the recovery 400s in that Yasso says your recovery lap should take the same amount of time as the 800m does to run. I might try and do that as I add more intervals, but for now my recovery is plenty for the pace at which I am running the 800s.

This afternoon I will test my shoulder at the gym with some upper body weights. Let's hope it holds up!