My experience with long intervals

Wednesday is my speed/strength workout day. Yes, it is Diwali, but its only effect on this plan is that I can start a bit later than usual. I decided to do some longer intervals today and did a quick study to see how to go about it and what it is good for. I found this article and decided that since I am training for an ultra-marathon, I should go for 5 X 1 mile at 10k pace with a 2-minute recovery period. I have not competed in many 10k races recently so I decided my 10k pace should be 4 minutes per kilometer.

I had to wear two layers since it suddenly became cold during the past few days. As I exited from our front gate, it was 6:30, and just light enough. Yesterday I just did 2k to shake out my legs, so I felt good. I headed south into “rural” Mohali and did a slow warm-up kilometer.

Then the fun started. I found it hard to get my speed up to the desired level. My warm-up must’ve been too short. The older I get, the longer it takes to warm up the engine. At one mile I decided that I would instead make it 2k with 2:30 recovery period. You may ask why and the answer is that I wanted to end on a whole number! So, my first 2k finished at 3k on my Garmin. Then I jogged approximately 2 minutes and 30 seconds and started again at 3.31 k (It seems I don’t always think clearly while making split-second decisions.)

The second one was easier. It brought me to the end of the road. If you want to go on after that, you have to run on the main road or cross it, so I made another decision to turn back and do only 4 repeats. With 1k at the end cool-down, that would give me 10k which is what is written on my running program for today. (I make these programs for the big races I prepare for to keep me on track)

For the third one, I had to hold myself back a bit since I felt good and warmed up. However, at the end of it, I was tired and had to walk. I watched my heart-beat as it went down from 187 to 118 before starting again after a 3-minute break.

My legs knew it was the last one and I tried to run as fast as I could, just concentrating on the running and forgetting about pace. It felt good to be done.

I am thankful for the gift of running. I strongly feel everyone in reasonably good health can start running and experience the hordes of benefits it gives. Together with my friend, Babu Gudime, we are organizing a 5k run on 17 November. I find that I know very little about marketing to get people to sign up for it. If you have any ideas, please let me know. We are also building a site for runners to see their results and for making it easy for anyone to organize a run.

I hope you all have a good time with friends and family during Diwali.

Keep running

Stephan