I have Wednesdays with Meredith!
The Pfitzinger Advanced Marathon plans call for a mid-week run of 10-12 miles. When we were following that plan, Meredith and I would often meet to do the runs together. We haven’t done a Wednesday run together since before Boston, but today I tagged along for one of her interval workouts.
15 min. warmup
3 x (3 min fast, 3 min recovery + 2 min fast, 2 min recovery + 1 min fast, 1 min recovery)
19 min. cooldown
————
1hr 10 min workout
I’ll admit, I showed up today not really knowing what all we were doing. I think Meredith was amused when I kept asking “we have to do WHAT? for HOW LONG?” When it comes down to it, however, intervals make workouts seem much more manageable to me. My stomach would get a bit of a cramp during the hard parts, but I knew I didn’t have to run hard for long.
By the time we hit the 3rd rep, I was in a zone. It’s hard to explain: it’s as though I felt all my insides bouncing as I ran. But I felt strong, definitely better than I expected!
Here are the “hard parts” of the workout…
| pace | avgHR | maxHR | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3min hard | 7:07 | 173 | 179 | 2min hard | 6:48 | 172 | 180 |
| 1min hard | 6:50 | 171 | 179 |
| 3min hard | 6:59 | 176 | 183 |
| 2min hard | 6:47 | 168 | 178 |
| 1min hard | 6:13 | 166 | 176 |
| 3min hard | 7:01 | 172 | 182 |
| 2min hard | 6:54 | 174 | 180 |
| 1min hard | 6:20 | 174 | 181 |
After each of the hard segments, there was an equal amount of time for “recovery”.
Overall pace for the run was 8:51mm, with an average heart rate of 157 and a max of 183.
Wow, we hit some good sprints there. Sure, it wasn’t sustained for long, but it felt good to get that sort of leg turnover.
Good luck to Meredith at Reach the Beach this weekend!
