First, It's Humid Out

This morning Drew and I rolled out of bed and headed to the Park. I was off for my regularly scheduled Terrier run and Drew had to be at work early so he was going to go for a quick run instead of heading to the gym. We walked to the bottom of the Park and then ran north so that I could meet my people. I got to the meeting place a few minutes early and after running for less than seven minutes, I was dripping with sweat. It looked like I had swam to the meeting spot instead of running there.

We did our normal strides plus a couple of extras. I'd guess that today's strides were about 0.70 miles instead of the normal 0.50 miles. After doing the strides, Spencer had us all gather round to explain the workout for today. Again, I went with the Sprint/Olympic group instead of doing anything more. After he explained what we were doing, he said, "First, it's humid out, so your heart rate will be more elevated than usual. Second, be sure to get something in you as soon as you get home to replace all that you'll be sweating out!" I'm not sure that as I was standing there soaking wet I really needed someone to remind me that it was humid out!

The workout for that group was to do a 4-mile interval run with 2:00 running and then recovery jog in place for 1:30 until we got to the northwest corner of the 102nd Street Transverse and then we would switch to 2:00 on and 0:45 recovery jogging in place. I was talking about this with Laura and we were discussing the different types of intervals. Basically, what we did was run for 2:00 hard (at 90%) and then draw an imaginary line in the road and jog in place for 1:30 (or 0:45). Some people use this opportunity to just stand around, but I really did keep moving around during the recovery time, but I didn't make any forward progress.

I started out running with 2 other girls and actually hung with them for the first half of the workout, which was pretty impressive for me (since I'm definitely one of the slowest people on the team). We ended up doing 8 x 2:00 running with 7 x 1:30 recovery, which was 2.15 miles in 16 minutes of running (or a 7:26/mile pace).

Um, hello? What in the hell was I doing running that fast? Granted there were the rest breaks in between, but it was active recovery rest and seriously? Less than 8 minutes a mile? Who do I think I am? Maybe I really was swimming out there after all. It's the only logical explanation for my speediness.

After getting to the corner of the 102nd Transverse where we were supposed to switch to the shorter rest intervals, the other two girls went a bit ahead of me, which was fine. Eliminating that extra recovery was definitely noticeable! I finished up with 9 x 2:00 running with 9 x 0:45 recovery, which was 18 minutes of running (or a 9:13/mile pace). I knew I had slowed down a lot on the second half of the run, but I'm still pretty pleased with that pace. I'm guessing I could have pushed myself harder and kept up for the remainder of the run, but my left calf started to get a little crampy and I figured that I was in need of some electrolytes, so I should just finish at my own pace.

I also timed my walk home, just out of curiosity, really. I had taken my watch off my wrist while doing the intervals because it's a lot easier for me to look at it when I'm holding it in my hand than it is to keep turning my wrist. I also changed the HR setting so that it would show up in percentages instead of numbers so I could really concentrate on keeping my HR up at the 90% mark for the running intervals. So, I was curious to see what my HR would be while just walking home after a hard workout. Still pretty high up there.

Oh, and as an aside, I seem to have discovered a new way of sleeping that makes my left elbow (the formerly broken one) the main pressure point of my body resting on the bed. I've woken up the past few days lying on top of it and then saying to myself, "my elbow hurts." I'm hoping that some of that is humidity related (?) and that when it cools off over the next couple days, my elbow will react better.

Run There
Time: 6:39
Distance: 0.70 miles
Pace: 9:30/mile
Calories: 63
Maximum HR: 186 (88%)
Average HR: 170 (80%)

Interval Run
Time: 34:00
Distance: 4.10 miles
Pace: 8:17/mile
Calories: 561
Maximum HR: 201 (95%)
Average HR: 184 (87%)

Walk Home
Time: 15:04
Distance: 0.80 miles
Pace: 18:49/mile
Calories: 115
Maximum HR: 164 (77%)
Average HR: 149 (70%)