Intervals! That hurt!

http://www.endomondo.com/embed/workouts?w=nZaYV-UaV1U&width=250&height=450On Saturday I went for a run with a colleague of mine. We decided to head out on a slightly shorter route, but instead of doing a steady pace we were to do 4 intervals of a kilometer with a kilometer to rest between intervals.

I include intervals in my training because they tend to be excellent at improving speed. Earlier this year I ran these intervals at close to 4 mins per kilometer, and ran my fastest 5K in 20:48 or something like that. It seems to me that if I can run three intervals close to goal pace, then I’ll only slip by 10-20 seconds over the race distance.

It’s been a while since I’ve done this! All year I’ve been aiming at doing sub 4-minute kilometers and have not really cracked it. That didn’t happen today either, but it feels like it’s not far off. The max speed was certainly high enough at 3:24 and during the very first set I actually decided to go a bit slower as I saw we were maintaining a 3:45 speed – which I knew I would be unable to sustain.

Sunday interval splits:
1km (warm-up): 5m:23s
2km (fast): 4m:02s
3km (recover): 5m:29s
4km (fast): 4m:10s
5km (recover): 5m:35s
6km (fast): 4m:20s
7km (recover): 5m:49s
8km (fast): 4m:31s
9km (recover and finish):  5m:41s

As you see, the intervals got slower as did the recoveries as we moved through them. It was a rough start to the afternoon, and I really enjoyed pushing it to the very limit. Besides this I tried to watch how Brett was doing with his Ironbaby and I took our daughter for a swim, which she absolutely loved. It just keeps getting better and better. It won’t be long before she’ll ask me to just stay away (*snik*). You can see the full workout to the right and here.

Time for some swim training tonight. That will be a shorter distance than last time, and I’ll try to do a few “fast” sets as well.