Mile intervals

With my schedule all screwed up already this week, I decided to use what days and daylight I had and went out late this morning to do my Monday workout a day early. The plan was for 9 miles, with 4 of them one-mile repeats at 10k pace.

The idea here is to warm up with a few miles, then run a mile at 10k pace, jog for a quarter of a mile and run another 10k-pace mile, and so for a total of 4 miles at 10k pace. I judged my 10k pace to be about 8 min. per mile, although in a real race I'm sure I'd be somewhere in the 7's.

I didn't feel real loose and speedy during my first three miles, but I immediately felt better as soon as I started my first fast mile, which I ran in 7:41. I think speeding up that much kind of flushed the lactic acid built up in my legs over the course of Friday's 20 and Saturday's slow 3.5 mile recovery run.

After that first mile, I repeated with miles ranging from 7:41 to 7:28, and instead of quitting at 9 miles I kept going at a slower pace to 10.2 miles, figuring I would exchange my midweek 10 mile run for this one (but checking when I got home I discovered my midweek run this week is only 8 miles). Even with a couple of pretty slow miles at the end of the workout my overall pace was 8:52, which I thought was pretty good considering all the miles I've put in in the last 7 days (62, including today's mileage).

My overall time for 10.2 miles was 1:30:27.