First Fartlek
Weasel Boy mapped out the next three weeks for me to help me focus for The Covered Bridges Half Marathon which is coming right up. Yesterday's plan called for my usual masters swim in the AM and then an evening run as well, which consisted of a 30-40 min. fartlek run. He suggested 5 whole miles of it but my body suggested that 30-40 mins. would suffice and my body won...sorry Weasel, you're in Ireland, not much you can do about it!!!
Anyway, I started with a 5 minute easy jog warmup and then set my Timex Ironman countdown timer to beep at me every minute. I did an easy jog for 2 minutes, a tempo run that felt a little faster than comfortable for 1 minute and then a 10 second sprint at the end of that minute. Then 1:50 of easy jogging until the next minute of tempo. I was able to maintain this for a whole 40 mins, which is good, but I definitely see LOTS of room for improvement. I think I'll stick with this 1:50/1:00/:15 sec. timing as I don't know that I could manage much more than a minute at the tempo pace I chose. I could probably extend the sprint to 15 or 20 seconds though. The EZ jog felt really good... as expected. For next week's fartlek, I'll extend the time 45 minutes and see how it goes. I'll decide after that if I want to extend the time of the entire run to 50 or 60 minutes or extend the intervals. Anyone have any reasons either way to go one way or the other? Longer run, same interval or longer intervals? Would love it if some of you speed demon track stars would weigh in...
In true Weasel Boy wisdom, I have today totally off and then a 2 hour run tomorrow. Should be interesting...I'm up to 1:20 hr so this feels like a big jump but I need to remind my body that it can go for that long before the race. There may be a bit of walking...
And I'm not really sore today - only a little stiff - which worries me. Will the pain kick in tomorrow? That won't add much to the joy of my predicted rainy 2 hour jaunt. Good thing I've got an Otter Box for my iPod...
Hope everyone has a great weekend - it's supposed to be soggy up here so soak up some rays for me, wherever you may be!!
posted by Hollyfish at 1:08 PM
5 Comments:
Cool interval drill! I never thought of setting my countdown timer for ONE minute to do TWO + ONE minute intervals. I guess the trick is that you have to remember not to speed up when you hear the FIRST beep in the middle of the two minute interval.
2:09 PM GMT-5
I've got my longest run so far scheduled for tomorrow, also. I'm planning on doing a little bit of walking. Just hope our ipods hold out!
6:32 PM GMT-5
You can order that funky timer from Running Room.
11:31 AM GMT-5
Great workout Spence. HTML makes me nuts too. I have wasted countless hours trying to change things around on my blog.
6:07 PM GMT-5
My Fartlek workouts are usually 5-6 miles total with 3-4 miles of Fartlek. I usually do 3 minutes hard with 2 minute recoveries or 4 on/1 off. I think you will do better with a longer hard, especially if you are training for longer mileage My suggestion would be to try 2/2 next time out and just don't push quite so hard on the tempo, then work up to 2/3!
Hope that helps
7:42 AM GMT-5
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