See? *This* is why I do intervals on the treadmill.

Last week was pretty awesome up until the point where I got sick (right in the middle of a flu epidemic. Awesome.) and had to sit on my butt for several days straight. I still managed to get my intervals in earlier in the week at the gym, and got a few days of lifting in (more on that later, when I'm not so sleepy), but I missed my tempo run for the week and any additional shorter runs that I normally would have done. Yesterday Dice and I took advantage of the beautiful weather and did 8, despite the fact that my nose is still running stronger than a leaky faucet and the post-nasal drip was causing me to hack up a lung every half mile or so.

I had planned to do intervals this morning but then my alarm went off at o'dark thirty and I was all, "hell no," and cuddled back into bed. Plus, it was something like 68 degrees today! that's outside running weather if I've ever felt it!

Despite having a horribly unhealthy lunch (more on that, too, sometime when I'm not sleepy) I got home and procrastinated a bit, thought about not running, and then decided that was ridiculous. So I laced up my sneakers and headed out to do my intervals on the lakefront path.

Now, this isn't the easiest endeavor, because you have to balance crowds and potholes in the path and headwinds and all sorts of other excuses. But I know it's really important that I get a feel for these paces "on my own," so off I went. Here's how the run looked:

Warm up: 2 miles
2 x 1 mile, cruise interval pace (800 jog between intervals)
6 x 200 meters, speed interval pace (200 jog between intervals)
Cool down: a bit more than 1 mile

Cruise interval pace for me should be a tad over an 8 minute mile, so that's what I was aiming for on the mile repeats. The first interval I ran into the wind, and I was ok with that because I knew I'd have the benefit of a tailwind on my 2nd interval, where I could potentially be fatigued. I started out something ridiculously fast (like a 6:45 pace) for the first 1/4 mile and then slowly eased up until I was holding steady around 8:00 pace. I had to weave between tourists and hit the damn awful potholes down by Chicago Ave. on the path, so I know those slowed me down a little bit, along with the headwind, so my pace came in right around 8:05. This was about 2 seconds off pace, which is not too shabby for just getting a feel for things.

I jogged out a 1/4 mile and back and then headed off for my second mile interval with the wind behind me. YAY TAILWIND. I was much more consistent starting out this time and eased into about a 7:55 pace right away. I then started fooling with my ipod while I was running to try to find a more suitable song (damn ipod) and evidently slowed down a bit because before I realized it my garmin said i'd dropped to an 8:11 pace. No worries, since I had about 6/10 of a mile to go yet, so I just kicked it up a bit and cruised for a bit and when after a while I didn't see my pace lower I started thinking that maybe I just didn't know how to gauge my pace and that I was just way more fatigued than I thought I was. I decided with .3 miles to go that I was just going to lay it out there and try to get my pace where it needed to be and really put a lot of effort into moving faster. I saw my pace shift to about an 8:06 pace and was irritated that it wasn't faster. I seriously felt like I was freaking running a track race. How was my pace not any faster? Then when I thought I had about 5 strides left, my watch starts freaking out on me, telling me i'm already done, and that, HELLO!, my pace was a 7:27. W. T. F. Garmin, you suck. I DON'T LIKE MOVING THAT FAST UNLESS I ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO (read: when i'm being chased by vampires), YOU STUPID PIECE OF CRAP.

ok, so obviously there were some issues with my pacing mechanism. clearly I can't rely on the Garmin's pace thing for this sort of stuff and will have to spend some time at the track instead. but man am I glad that all of that "feeling like I was going really fast" wasn't for nothing.

The 6 sets of 200's were a breeze after that. Most of them came in right around 56 seconds, which is right where I need them to be, so I was pretty happy with that. And then I headed home as a cool down. Awesome.

I was looking back to some of my older times doing these workouts. I followed the full version of this plan when I did Dexter to Ann Arbor in 2006, and I happen to be on the EXACT same week when it comes to this particular workout. WEIRD. I noticed that my times were pretty much spot on from that training cycle, and that makes me really happy. I recall these intervals being difficult, but not impossible at the time when I did them in 2006, and now I don't really think they're THAT hard. They're definitely a really good effort for me, but not to the point where I'm dreading the workout like I was back then. So WOOT! for being stronger now than I was back then! (or at least, perceiving myself as stronger.) This training plan pretty much led to a 1/2 mary PR for me back in 2006, so I'm really excited about the potential that I might have going into this next marathon training cycle.