Trial of Miles

5k+ pace intervals in First Landing. I went 6x 2 min at perceived effort--trying to push well into the anerobic each time. Each interval was in the 2:4x-ish range, based on feel, leaning towards the lower half of that. Three and a half mile warm up, three and a half miles of intervals, three mile cool down. I felt ok, but not great throughout. There was a definite lactic acid build up in the arms and upper body, and I needed to do a serious shake out after the fourth and fifth interval. The fifth interval was enough to make me leery of the sixth, which is what I was hoping for. I wanted to be gassed at the end of the workout, and I was.

Did 16 big ones in the park today. Three miles to the park, ten once I got inside, and another three to get back to the house. The way over to the park was slow, slow, slow; but then again, it was suppposed to be--it was a warm up. I got going once I hit dirt instead of asphalt, and started turning over quicker. My pace probably dropped to sub 7's for a couple of miles in there, and after about an hour or so of running, I was feeling pretty good about myself. One mile later, I could feel the aches creeping up in my joints. I haven't gone 16 miles since the marathon, and before the marathon, I hadn't gone 16 miles since March, so needless to say, my body was not used to the distance. Good thing I chose sand and dirt rather than asphalt and cement for the running surface today. By the time I left the park and was headed home, I was stepping gingerly and cursing myself for going long. I didn't know that you could feel like such an old man at 23, but apparently it's quite possible. After some heavy duty stretching and massage with the Stick, I was reasonably mobile again. Ugh. I have got to get back into the rut of consistent training.

Easy run out to First Landing left side and back. Nothing too crazy, just ran slow. I'm willing to run slow for now, because it will become that much more apparent to me when the pace of my daily runs starts getting quicker. For whatever reason, that is my "sign" to tell me that I'm in shape. I need to be able to run at a light tempo on a training run to feel like I'm in shape.