Wednesday speed work!

Aleks set out a workout for us today; it looked like this:

1 mile (slow) warm up (5 laps)
1 lap @ 6:45 pace
1 lap recovery
6 laps @ 7:45 pace w/ 1 lap recovery after each
1 mile recovery

The track is 1/5 of a mile, not the standard 1/4 (it's around a soccer field), so this amounts to just under 5 miles.

I was nervous, but not couldn't-sleep nervous like I often am before a long run. I worried that I wouldn't be able to keep up; after all, I haven't even tried to run fast in almost a year.

But I woke up without knee or foot pain, so I just went. How bad could it be?

Well, turns out, I'm not sure what my actual pace was for any lap, as I couldn't quite hang with Aleks and Allison but I was ahead of Nancy (who also had a Garmin). For the first five fast laps, I was about 5 to 7 seconds behind; which translates to 25 to 35 seconds per mile behind, but I think they actually went faster than the advertised pace.

So I was slower, they were faster, and I finished five out of seven pretty well. The last two fast laps were HARD and I slowed down a lot - but got them done.

For a first speed work workout, that's fine by me.

Aleks and I made our plan for the Portland Marathon, too. It basically looks like this:

Monday: Recovery runs of 4 or 5 miles
Wednesday: Speed work (5 miles including recovery laps)
Friday: Marathon pace runs of 6 to 9 miles
Saturday or Sunday: Long runs at endurance pace; we'll have a 19, 20, and a 22 miler before the big day.

I'm actually excited to have a plan again and a training log. It feels right.