Leg & Lung Burner

This morning, I started my day bright and early with a yoga class.

I was so excited that my studio recently added a 6 AM class. I used to regularly practice in the mornings but this new studio didn’t offer the early morning classes until this week. I’d forgotten how much I love starting my day with yoga. It just feels like such a fresh start to the day, like I think more clearly,and am calmer. I love my morning runs too, but yoga gives me a special feeling. (hahahhaah I just wrote that and then thought, “WTF? ‘special feeling’?? what am I saying?!!” Anyway….)

Yesterday, I did an interval workout on the treadmill and my knees felt fine. Well, they felt fine until the cool down. Isn’t that weird? I don’t know if I was distracted during the high intensity portions and just didn’t notice it, or if there is something about running slower (e.g. landing heavier on my feet, angle of the way I land??) that causes the pain. The area is tender to the touch, particularly around my left knee, but it doesn’t hurt to walk or anything. I’m baffled so I’m just trying to listen to my body and back off when it yells at me.

The workout I did was the one prescribed Cherry Blossom 10 Miler Advanced Training Program. (I just realized the race almost exactly a month away – wahoo! Looking at last year’s pictures are making me so excited! I loved our pink ombre theme. 🙂 ). I haven’t done all the workouts they’ve sent and haven’t followed their training program exactly, but I have enjoyed seeing what they recommend and have enjoyed the ones I have done.

This was a 1 mile repeat workout – 3-4 rounds of 1 mile pushes at 10K to 10 mile pace (80-85% max heart rate), with 1-2 minutes recovery jogging in between each mile. Doing longer “intervals” (longer meaning 1 mile as opposed to 200/400/800 meters) at a challenging speed helps your body learn to hold a tougher pace for a longer period of time to improve your speed and endurance. I also think they help you develop mental grit to push through the discomfort of really pushing yourself in a race.

I was too lazy to dig out my heart rate monitor, so I picked a pace just below my 10K pace (7:06) for my intervals. That race was a year ago and I know I’ve gotten faster since then, but haven’t done a 10K more recently. I think I should have kicked the pace up more because I didn’t really feel all that challenged. I tried shortening my recovery time in between repeats after the first one and maybe if I’d done a 4th mile repeat I would have felt a bit more beat, but I ran out of time and had to head home to shower before work.

This is what I ended up doing:

• 1 mile warm-up @ 8:30 min/mile
• 1 mile @ 6:58 pace
• 90 seconds easy jog @ 8:45 min/mile
• 1 mile @ 6:58 pace
• 75 seconds easy jog @ 8:45 min/mile
• 1 mile @ 6:53 pace
• 1 mile cool down @ 8:15 pace
• Incline at 1.0 for everything except the last 4 minutes when I dropped it to 0.5 during my cool down

I definitely recommend adding a workout with some longer pushes like this if you are training for a race longer than  5K. You don’t have to run the same pace as me to make this work for you. Just find your 10K pace and use that as your fast speed. (If you don’t know your 10K pace, add 20-30 seconds per mile to your 5K pace.) And make the recovery part a very easy jog – get your breath back and get enough energy back to push it again. But be sure you can jog; if you have to walk, you’re pushing too hard on the fast part.

You can increase or decrease the difficulty of the workout by lengthening or shortening the recovery time between repeats or by increasing or decreasing your speed on the fast parts. And if you’re doing on the treadmill, make sure to put at least 0.5 incline on there. (I usually do 1.5 incline but backed it off a little because of my knee.)

Let me know if you have any questions or if you try this! Happy running!