Speedwork Wednesday

This morning I went out with the intention of running a few miles of warm-up, then doing five half-mile repeats at the track. However, greediness overcame me, and instead of sticking to four miles of a warm-up, I stretched it out to five miles, so by the time I got to the track it was much later that it should have been. It should not have required a rocket scientist to realize that an extra mile of easy running would pretty much suck up the time allotted to two of my half-mile laps on the track!

So, reluctantly (well, sort of reluctantly), in the interest of getting to work on time (a triviality), I called it quits after three half-miles, but then threw in a quarter-mile sprint, just for fun. Then a quarter-mile (plus) cool-down lap. Yep, once again a little math and logic would have told me that I could just have done a fourth half-mile repeat instead! But in all fairness, I was going to only do half a lap cool-down, but the gate at the corner of the field was locked, so I had to finish the trip around.

I ended up at home with 7½ miles total run, and an average pace of 9:12 per mile (which averaged in everything from a 7:05 pace on my quarter-mile to 10:08 for my first full mile).

One thing I did successfully do today was use my Garmin lap counter to track my repeats, instead of wearing a third watch for the purpose. I have to admit that I'm woefully uninformed in how to do all but the basic stuff with the Garmin. I basically read the instruction book enough to operate it for my purposes, and never bothered to learn the tricky stuff. I still have the instruction book, of course, and someday I'm sure I'll look at it again! I discovered the lap counter by mistake one day, when I pushed the button inadvertantly. It is totally useful, of course, because not only does it decrease the number of watches I need to wear, it also gives me time, distance, and pace for the individual laps. (As most people probably already know.) So it was nice to know that my measured out quarter and half-mile distances are, in fact, correct (within 1/100 of a mile, and that just reflects minor discrepancies in when I push the stop button).

Here are my splits for today. I am eliminating the minute or so resting jogs in between laps (although I am counting them in my total distance).

The warmup:
1 - 10:08
2 - .51 at 9:23 pace
3 - 9:26
4 - 9:37
5 - 9:28
6 - .41 at 9:33 pace

The speedwork:
1 - .49 in 3:50.46 (7:48 pace)
2 - .49 in 3:53.94 (7:55 pace)
3 - .50 in 3:50.40 (7:40 pace)
4 - .24 in 1:43.68 (7:05 pace)

Then a final .61 mile includes .3 around the track and .3 home at an average 9:37 pace.