Fartleks, The Solo Version

Tonight, I had to get my pre-Bison Half Marathon fartlek workout in, the last speedy stuff until the race on Sunday. Typically, this is run with a crew of between 5 and 10 people, all sharing the pacing work so that you can spend at least half the time just tagging along behind someone else doing the work of setting the pace. You also get some variety in pacing with the crew, and it's generally more fun to work hard with friends. Having said all that, my schedule conspired to prevent joining the gang this morning, so I set out at 7:30pm tonight to do my pre-race work.

I checked things out ahead of time, and I could still wear the iPod, since I could set the Garmin so that it would light up when each fartlek interval stopped and started, and I could notice that at a glance while running in the dark in the 'Hood. Having figured that out, I left the house for the fun and games. 15 minutes of easy warmup ensued, and then it was time to start up the 10 x 2:00 fartlek intervals, with 1:00 easy jogging between the faster bits. On my relatively hilly neighborhood streets, I pushed and pulled through the fartleks, trying to find a faster pace that didn't seem like a dead sprint. I wasn't checking my pace or anything as I went, and HR wasn't an issue on this sort of workout (it could go as high as it wanted), so I was "running how I feel" all night. Hard running, but somewhat in control, or so I tried to make it. I found my way to the water tower trail during interval number 6, and except for one sort of scary step over a dip in the dirt road, no harm was done. I exited the trail on interval number 10, and then spent about 15 minutes cooling down on an easy run.

As it turns out, I ran way harder tonight than usual for this workout. I guess I should have expected that, but it was faster by a bunch than the last time I did the 2:00 version of the fartlek workout. I averaged 7:38/mile on the fartlek section, including the 1:00 recovery segments, which was faster by 20 seconds/mile than the last time. My recovery bits were paced about the same, but I was really blasting most of the first 8 intervals, touching 6:45-6:50/mile pace for the majority of them. Pretty cool. For the night, I scored 7.12 miles at an average of 8:23/mile, which is the fastest I've ever done this workout.

After some balance drill stuff to loosen up, and some stretching in the house, I was done. This was a big confidence booster with the Bison Run coming up, and now I get to chill out for 3 days until Sunday. I'll find out then what this workout and the mile repeats on Monday did or did not tell me about my racing form. Should be interesting!