Mile-Long Intervals

A good long run today, the whole 5K. (Not all running, of course!) I'm off the program, now. The balance of the Couch to 5K program I was following is just progressively longer runs, with no rest intervals. I want to push myself, but I also want to enjoy myself while I'm doing it, so I'm modifying the program a bit. I'm going to continue with allowing rest intervals from time to time.

Today, I did twelve minute intervals. At the pace I'm running, that's about a mile. After my five minute warm up walk, i started running, then I stopped and walked for three minutes after the first mile, and then again after the second. I finished the 5k distance at a run, after six more minutes. This was a total of 30 minutes of running in the 41 minutes it took me to finish the 5K. This is two whole minutes faster than the previous times I went the distance - more running and less walking. I hit the button to slow down as soon as the treadmill beeped this completed distance, of course. I did do a cool down walk, during which I played with the incline.

I felt really good during the first mile. The music carried me along, and for the first ten minutes I was actually having fun. It got harder, but not terrible, until the end. Still my wind is my limiting factor. During my three minute walks, my heart rate went down below 120 bpm but I was still breathing hard. I've had some congestion the past few days, so I'm hoping this is a temporary limiting condition that will fix itself. I did the whole first mile at 5.1 mph, but the second mile was at least half at 4.8 mph. The third shorter run was slow, then back up to 5.1 because the music made me take a faster pace. At the end, my legs were definitely tired, too, so I'm thinking rather than more runs, I should throw in some longer walks to get the muscles built up.

I definitely am grooving on swinging my arms, matching my feet to the music, and feeling like I'm running on top of the world. I'm ten full weeks out from the race, and I intend to work on three things: (1) picking up the pace, (2) longer runs with shorter walks, and (3) hills. I'll be doing some of this outside, but not much yet.

Excelsior.