sweat in my eyeballs!

Happy Day everyone!  I'm SO glad its Thursday.  This week has been going by pretty fast, but I am ready for the weekend.  Jake and I still have coughs that wont go away, so I havent really gotten very good sleep this week, so the weekend will be nice to catch up on it.

Tuesday
4 miles easy - avg. pace 8:40

Yesterday
6.5 mi. total; 2.5 mi. WU - 4x2min. hard (1:30 rest) - 2.5 mi. CD

Well yesterday was my first hard workout of this cycle, and it went better than I expected.  Honestly I was really nervous going into it.  I wasnt sure what my paces would be, and was afraid I would feel like a big oaf clomping along.  Jake met me at the gym to run along side me.  It was nice having him there for moral support, and knowing I wasnt the only one suffering though the workout :)  I also figured, I will do most of my speed/hard days on the t-mill for awhile, just to get a handle on my paces, and to get comfortable with them.  Nichole also added 4 "striders" (dont worry, I had to look it up too!) into the warm up.  I felt this helped ALOT.  Especially since I havent run fast in a few months, it really got my legs warmed up to run fast during the workout.  But let me break it down for you...
1.0% incline
2.5 mile warm up - easy pace, 4 striders at 7:12 pace (probably could have gone faster though)
4x2min. (1:30min. rest). 1) 7:12 pace, 2) 7:12 pace, 3) 7:08 pace 4) 6:58 pace
2.5 mile cool down

I could have gone faster on the first two repeats, but wasnt sure about pacing.  Now I know that next time I can push it a little more.  But on the 3rd one I literally had sweat coming into my eyes!  I've never had that before - made me feel badass :), and on the last one I wanted to barf at the end.  I had to lean on the side bars to catch my breath.  I figured if I'm sweating that much and ready to toss my cookies then it was a good workout.  Also, inbetween each repeat, I would stop for 30-45 sec. to catch my breath, then slow jog to get to a minute and a half before starting again.

I do have to note that a hard workout makes you feel super awesome.  Maybe I just had a good day, and maybe I wont feel awesome the next time around, but it gave me alot of confidence going into my next hard day on Friday.  This workout also made me feel that I was, and still am pretty clueless about what its like to really work hard.  In the past I would just run, at a pretty moderate pace, and would think it was hard, but in reality it wasnt.  I was doing mediocre workouts and telling myself that it was enough.  It feels nice to know that I can push myself, and am excited to see where I can go :)




red arrow =how i felt before workout, green arrow = how i felt after!


Today is an easy day. 4 miles at 9+ pace.  Sounds lovely and I'm looking forward to it!