Lots and Lots of Running: Hills and Sprints

The past two days have just been a blur of running.

After I ran 5 miles on Tuesday morning, I had choices to make. On the planner were 3 miles of hills and 8 easy miles, all taking place before Thursday. I could either run 3 more miles on Tuesday, or push everything back.

JW came home from rehearsal around 9:45, and said he was going to go to the gym for his Insanity workout. I decided to go with him and complete 3 more miles on the treadmill, just to get it out of the way.

3 Miles of Hills: 1 mile warm up, 8 X200m uphill sprints, topped off with a 1 mile cool down.

Since the workout called for "Uphill Sprints",  I bumped the incline to 3.0 and the speed to 6.1. I decided there needed to be an equal amount of cool down time between sprints, so I tacked on another 200m "Downhill Jog" after each sprint by choosing a 1.0 incline and 5.4 speed. After the mile of warm up, it looked like this:

1-1.12 miles: 1st Uphill Sprint
1.12-1.24: Downhill Jog
1.24-1.36: 2nd Uphill Sprint
......(etc, etc)
2.7-2.82: 8th Uphill Sprint
2.82-3.21: Cool Down

At least the Calories Burned are similar?

I was pretty spent!

On Wednesday, my legs were still pretty tired from the 9 miles I had run over the course of the previous day. I wasn't sure when I was going to tackle 8 miles, but it gave me comfort that the instructions told me that I should take it easy.

Around 2, I decided that I would try a sunset run at the park. I knew I had to get there before 6 so I would still be running while the sun was up. I updated my iOS during the day and played through it - some cool features, but ultimately I wasn't jumping up and down about it - but I never plugged it back in to charge before I left.

At 6, I was still sitting in my apartment. I had about 5 minutes of intense vacillation while I decided whether I should just go now and run in the dark for a little bit (sunset was slated to be at 7:15- it's setting so much earlier now! I'm not ready for it!), or postpone for Thursday.

A little voice in the back of my head piped up: Why did you run twice yesterday if you were just going to get behind schedule again the next day? And it was absolutely right - my efforts would have been for nothing if I put off another run. I quickly got dressed and left, braving through the 6pm traffic, and arrived at the park at 6:30. 30 minutes off my mark, but at least I was there and doing it!

I listened to my audiobook while I ran since I wasn't really worried about my pace - I was more worried about when the sun would set, running in the dark, and now a new worry crept into my mind: if my phone was going to die midway through my run. It was at about 30% before I started, and I'd be running two apps simultaneously: Nike+ Running and Music. I had to get this finished as quickly as possible!

I didn't start out with a sprint, but with what felt like a pretty fast pace. I disregarded it. Last time I tried to guess my pace, I overshot it and thought I was running in the 9s when I was really in the mid-10s. Wake up call! I decided not to think about it.

I forgot that I had turned off the voice updates for each mile, and that it would come on in the middle of the run and tell me how fast I had been going. (I can't decided if I like this or not.) It came on all the same at 4 miles and said that I was running at an average pace of 8'05''. What!!

That gave me a little boost of motivation just to see how fast I could end up going.

A "slow" first mile, with a boost of confidence at Mile 5 and a surging last mile.

I am SO happy with how I ran! It felt effortless and I felt like I was just flying along, putting one foot in front of the other. So much for taking it easy... but whatever, I felt awesome.

Harvest Moon

I snapped this picture of the moon and my phone immediately died. Hah! Here's a better picture (not mine):

Beautiful!

Next up: an NTC workout and an "easy "15 miles on Saturday. Eep!