Notes
Terrific long run and workout with speed today.
It was tough, but I loved how it felt, and I loved having to try to recruit fast twitch muscles at the end of a long effort.
The design of this workout was due, in part, to the audible I pulled for this past wednesday's workout. THAT workout on wednesday was going to be fast 400's on the track, but then ended up being an indoor, long 8 mile block at marathon place instead . THIS workout today was going to be some marathon pace stuff at the end of a long run, so I changed it to include fast twitch stuff instead.
Workout was 15 mile long run, with speed intervals from mile 10-14.
Intervals were 30 seconds at a mile pace type effort, and 90 seconds running at normal long run pace.
The work got hard, but was good, and helped to make the last 5 miles of a 2 hour run go by much faster.
30/90's
The avg pace for the 30 second pieces was about 6min flat. That seems about right? maybe? It definitely felt like mile pace effort, even if that isn't anything close to mile pace. But for starting them almost 90min into a run, that seems about right. Fastest pace for the 30's was 5:43, and I'm happy with that, and slowest one was 6:15. I'm guessing there wasn't quite that much variation, but I'm sure the GPS isn't as reliable for only 30sec pieces.
The 90 second pieces also got hard, because I wasn't able to finish a piece at mile pace and then retreat into a slow, jog/slog like I might during a normal track workout. I was really proud of the 90 second pieces because the average pace for them was about 7:20 pace. I kept my recovery at a good clip like I might be at naturally at the end of a long run.
From a fitness perspective, I was really happy with how this one felt. Overall, it was my longest long run yet, and the last 5 miles of it were at a quality long run pace with 30 seconds bursts of mile pace work.