Faster Than I Thought

Friday I ran 4 miles with a friend from work.  I told myself I was going to treat this run like a race and every time I saw him creeping up on me, I sped up a little.  I ended up finishing with an 8:40/mi average pace. 3-4 miles is considered at “Short Tempo Run” in the FIRST Program which should also be my 10K pace so when I got home I readjusted my training speeds accordingly.

Thinking I was all set with a challenging yet do-able training plan I headed out for a trial interval workout.  I programmed a workout in my GPS watch to do 8- 400m (1/4 mile) intervals with a 2 min break in between each.  You can do this with a stopwatch too or with any timing device. My goal (based off the FIRST paces) was to do each 400 in 1:55-1:56.

After the first interval I had no idea how my body physically was going to run 7 more of those.  It was really, really hard.  By the half way point my quads were on fire, my breathing was heavy and I really didn’t think I was going to finish the workout.

I have a way of getting in to my own head and last night I was trying to make excuses not to finish the workout:  I cross-trained this morning.  I don’t want to hurt myself before training even starts.  Maybe I will just jog the last 4 intervals.  And it went on and on and on for 2 minutes.  Then my watch started beeping and my legs were moving and I was off. 

There really is something amazing about pushing your body beyond its limits.  As my feet pounded the track perfectly timed to my breathing I found myself not focusing on how much it hurt or how far away the finishing point is or about how good the 2 minute rest will feel in a matter of seconds.  Instead I was amazed by how powerful my legs felt, surprised at how natural the movement in my body felt, and disappointed that just a few seconds ago I didn’t think I could finish the workout.

Don’t get me wrong, I struggled through this workout.  It was hard but finishing it felt great and seeing that my paces were 11-14 seconds faster than they should have been was empowering.

This pace thing is going to be harder to figure out than I thought because I am faster than I thought.  So far the short tempo run and my last 3 long runs fit perfectly in the 10k- 8:40 pace breakdown so I am going to stick to that for now but I am going to run as fast as I can on speed days and hopefully the other paces will naturally improve…we shall see.