Speed and Recovery

Wednesday's workout was 440 repeats.  I started out with 2.5 miles for a warmup.  That led to the track.  I know I have to peel 4.5 seconds per lap off my mile time to hit the 6 minute mark, so I had to give a little more effort.  I have been trying to run 1:30's and better, so I was aiming for 1:25's.  It went like this...

1:26
1:23
1:21
and...  1:40

I was doing great until that last one.  I hit the 220 mark and came to a complete stop.  My breathing was out of control, so I stopped for about 10 seconds.  I looked at my watch and instead of completely giving up and walking it back, I got back into Lane 1 and finished up in 1:40.

My last 440 repeat workout, I ran 1:30, 1:29, 1:27, 1:25.  That comes out to 5:51 and my mile time was 6:18.  With that data, but without a compensation for the slight speed increase, I figure that I would need to run a combined 5:33 in splits to hit the 6 minute mark.  This workout came out to 5:50.  I had great progress until that last lap.  I ran 39 seconds at the 220 mark, so if I kept that up, I would have run 1:18.  That would have been 5:28 and that would have bettered my goal.  Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda.

Even though I didn't realize my goal for the workout, I ran much harder on those repeats than the previous same workout.  My legs were killing me on Thursday.  I planned on taking it easy for my easy 5 mile run, but I didn't think it was going to hurt the entire run.  What was supposed to be a slow 2 mile warmup turned into a slow 5 mile warmup.  I ran around 52:30 and hurt the entire time.  At least it was soreness and not actual pain from tears or something like that.

Today is a welcome off day.