Tuesday - Intervals

A great run session this morning. Up at 5am, out by 540am on the bike down to Millfields Park. The weather is getting warmer (still not warm but warmer) and mornings brighter, makes training MUCH more enjoyable and easy to endure. On to interval training now, we have moved on from just easy, steady, aerobic work and we are now working on more speed directed workouts AS WELL as the slow steady stuff.

I cycled out nice and easy, knowing I have a hard INTERVAL session coming, don't want to waste any energy on the commute otherwise Ill pay for it later on.

The session consisted of a 400m loop round some cones. We had to set a pace which we thought was a comfortable pace, nothing too slow, but something we could hold for a period of time. We then do one loop, rest, two loops, rest, three loops, rest, four loops, rest and finally 5 loops. Each individual interval getting longer (more loops), aim to stay at the pace we first set on the initial loop.

Normally, with inexperienced amateur athletes you will go out too hard initially and not be able to hold the pace for the remaining intervals.... me, not being inexperienced (yeh right) managed not only to hold my pace, but get faster with each interval, not slow intervals either, averaging about 4 mins/km, a fast pace for me and not something I could keep up beyond 4km..... at the moment anyway. The others who went faded as expected.

Overall a good session. Very beneficial. Not only does it work the 'fast twitch' muscles (the muscles which are used for faster, more explosive exercises, these muscles tire much quicker than the 'slow twitch' muscles) and starts to tone them up but it also allows you to learn about yourself, learn that you need to pace yourself depending on the distance. I plan on doing a Marathon in November, these types of workouts show me that pacing is everything otherwise by the end of that marathon I will fade away to a slow pace and I want to be finishing strong, stronger and faster than my initial pace.

I should be swimming tomorrow morning but I think I will re-jiggle my TP and sleep in. Gym tomorrow after work though for sure.