Quick Update

I just wanted to check in before I hit the sack to let you know how my day went.

I went to bed before 10 last night and think I was asleep fairly quickly. Had my usual disturbed sleep but when the alarm went off at 5am, I was ready to get up. Had a little coffee and a banana, got dressed, and left the house around 5:40. The sun wasn't up yet but it was light enough to see fine. It was about 11C (50F) so I wore my tights and a long sleeved shirt under my jersey. It was a beautiful clear morning and I felt happy and excited to out on what was going to be a lovely sunrise.

I made sure I did my full 10 minute warm up so that I was ready for running fast. I hit the lap button and started my workout.

The goal was to run 10km doing an interval workout and then record my 10k time.

The workout was:

2 minutes at 5k pace (had to guess on that, just ran pretty fast)
1 minute recovery ( I did about 7 min/km pace (11:15 mile)
1 minute fast again
30 seconds recovery
30 seconds fast
30 seconds fast.

This set took 5:30. I hit the lap button at the end and repeated the pattern until I'd done 10km.

My heart rate averaged around 165-170 on the running segments, and dropped down to 155-160 on the recoveries.

Nothing hurt while I was running although my hips (ITB) got pretty tight after about 7-8 km.

I kept a fairly steady pace for all the sets although I got a little slower on the last few.

Here are my splits:

Set # - Avg pace for the whole 5:30 set

1 - 5:41
2 - 5:46
3 - 5:37 (best pace = 9 min mile)
4 - see below
5 - 5:51
6 - 5:44
7 - 5:50
8 - 6:02 (slowest pace = 9:42 mile)
9 - 5:57
10- 5:51
11- 5:28

For the 4th set, I hit the lap button at every interval to see my true running pace.

2 min - 5:05 (8:26 mile)
1 min - recovery
1 min - 5:15 (8:10 mile)
30 sec recovery
30 sec - 4:45 (7:38 mile)
30 sec recovery

My 5km split was about 28:30

My 10km finish time was 57:52

I was pretty happy about that. I always thought my 10km race goal would be to break an hour so I never expected that I'd break it on an interval training run.

28:30 is not my best 5km time but it's the fastest I've run in a year and I'm pretty sure I could do a 26:30 5km if I didn't do the recovery intervals.

Of course, I can never seem to do that pace in a triathlon after I've been biking hard. I'm always lucky to break 30 minutes then.

Anyway, the real challenge of this run wasn't to be able to run fast, I was pretty sure I could do that. My real goal is to see if I can recover from a hard run and not be injured.

I was in a bit of a hurry to get ready for work after my run. I forgot to factor in time to stretch and ice, but I did get a little stretching/icing done before I left for work, and I took the ice packs with me and iced my legs while I sat at my desk before school started. I did a really good stretch while the kids had PE today. Oh and I wore my Zensah sleeves all day too.

I iced them again after work and then had a hot epsom salts bath and then I used the foam roller and stretched again.

My legs have been pretty tired and sore-ish all day but not painful, so far, it's a good sore I think.

I guess we will have a better idea in a couple of days. Holding my breath until then.

Tomorrow is a hard 1 hour interval ride. Warm up, then 30 seconds all out, 30 seconds spin - repeat for 15-20 minutes. My legs are gonna be tired I think.

PS Coach called me a stud today. That's a good thing. :)