Mile Repeats!

Since my wife and I had a "come to Jesus" 6 months ago with regards to the beep of the house alarm waking her up at 5am every morning, I have moved my runs to a more functional 8am start time. The goods news of this is that I am not falling asleep at my desk at 3pm. The challenging part is that my mid week stressor workout has to be done solo. Not to mention the fact that I no longer take part in the Miner's run. The treadmill is my new training partner. This brings me to this past Tuesday's workout...

I didn't know what to expect or how I was going to feel/respond to this workout since I had a hard effort on Saturday, a long run on Sunday, an easy run on Monday and I planted 9 shrubs on Monday night! Having said all of that, I decided to go with mile repeats as opposed to hill repeats. I like hill repeats because they put pressure on my circulatory system and force me to run with economical form like no other. I like mile repeats because they are mentally and physically challenging for over 5 minutes. Not to mention the fact that you induce mitochondrial proliferation...put that in your pipe and smoke it...Ha! So mile repeats it was...

My goal was to run (5) 1  mile repeats all at 5:27 pace (11.0 mph) and at 1% incline. All with a quarter mile jog. Mission accomplished. I've done this workout a few times now and it's funny because when I started I would use a 10 minute interval which was giving me four and a half minutes to recover. The miles are still very challenging, yet I am able to recover a lot sooner to the point where I am only needing to take a quarter of a mile or less to recover. That is good stuff that is in turn giving me more confidence with my tempo runs with the horses on Saturday.

Yesterday and this morning consisted of 2 easy 10 milers, before I work out with the varsity sprinters of my High School's track team Friday afternoon. A little speed session in store...should be fun! I'll go for an easy 10 miler early Saturday before we jump on the plane...

I was very sorry to hear the sad news surrounding Sally Meyerhoff's tragic accident. I believe she was a teammate at Duke of both Shannon Rowbury and Kelly Fillnow, and Caitlin Chrisman had a memorable encounter with her at her Olympic Trials qualifying race...Say a prayer!