Finally! Some Good Speedwork!

It had been a few weeks since I felt like my speedwork at the gym was good.  In fact, the last 2 or 3 times actually had me working harder and going slower.  (Let's clarify, though, we're talking 9.3 mph vs. 9.6 mph.  I know, I know.  That's still crazy fast, but if I could do 9.6 mph for some half-mile increments and handle it weeks ago, why would I seemingly go backwards and feel as though I had to put more effort in just to get to 9.3 mph?!)  Something wasn't right.

During Monday's visit with Dr. D'Amico, we talked about that.  His conclusion was that I wasn't giving myself enough of a recovery period in between those half-mile increments.  Here's what I was doing (prior to today): walk for 0.20 miles, run at a reasonable pace (8 minutes per mile) to get up to 1.0 miles, jack up the speed to whatever I could do (nine-point-something mph) for a half mile, bring the pace back down to a brisk walk (4-ish mph) for 0.20 miles, and then repeat over & over until about the 6 mile mark where I'd then walk one last time for about 0.20 miles and then run at about a 7:30 pace (which is 8 mph in case you're wondering) to get me up to a nice, round distance where I'd stop.

Let's back up a bit for some perspective.  Running at 9.3 mph is a pace of 6:27 according to Runner's World pace converter and 9.6 mph is a pace of 6:15.  I get that we're not talking a huuuuuuuuuuuuge difference; but to me, it mattered (and still matters).

What Dr. D'Amico suggested was to walk (although I use that term loosely since most people don't walk at 4 mph) for 5 minutes.  I'll be honest, I tried.  I really, really did.  But 5 minutes of that is just, well, slow & boring!  I definitely gave myself more time in between bouts of "run like a bat out of hell," but it was probably more like 3 or 4 minutes (at the most).

Maybe it was the extra time in between to recover; maybe it was the awesome stretch that I had on Monday.  Whatever it was, today was the first speedwork day in a while that my reply to Dave when he asked how it was was (literally) "awesome!"

    
Oh, and when you've got to put tape on your phone to hold the cord of your ear buds a certain way so they work, it's time to get a new set of ear buds.  Yes, this (below) is a picture of what I had to do this morning at the gym to get everything to work.  Embarrassing!

I should've taken a picture of this with the cord.  However, years of gymnastics & ballet must not have made me well-coordinated because I dropped the phone (but held on to the cord) as I was getting out of the car.  The laws of physics won: the cord ripped out of the tape and stayed in my hand; the phone went straight to the ground.