Need for Speed

When I was coming up with the title for this post I immediately thought of the movie Speed. And then I immediately thought of one of my favorite Simpson's lines ever.



I think it was called "The Bus That Couldn't Slow Down"

Of course my post has nothing to do with the movie or the hilariousness that is Homer Simpson. So why am I posting about speed?

Because last night was the return of group speedwork!

Yes, it's dark. Yes, it's cold. But some of us are hardcore. Some of us are training for Boston. And some of us just like the camaraderie of running with a group. I'll let you guess which group(s) I fall into. Hint: it's not Boston.

One of the group members who has raced for a Fleet Feet team and who has worked with a local running coach took it upon herself to organize a Thursday night speedwork outing. She found a 1.7 mile loop in a nearby town that has little traffic and very few intersections and came up with some workouts and drills for us to do.

So, decked out in our reflective gear, blinkers, and headlamps we did a warm up loop (which I did not time). Then it was on to drills. We all decided we were glad it was dark because we probably looked like morons skipping, side-galloping, high knee-ing, backward running, and striding across the parking lot for the village swim club while waving our arms in the air. We did a few standing exercises to work on foot placement and then it was time for the workout.

We decided to do 5 repeats of 2 minutes at 5K pace followed by 3 minutes of easy jogging. I set up my Garmin for those intervals and it worked okay. For awhile. I'm not sure what happened during the 5th interval. I'm sort of bummed it apparently screwed up during that last fast interval because that's then one where our "coach" told me to work on increasing my cadence. From behind she told me it looked like I took off but I'd love to have the numbers to back up that observation.

But here's the numbers I do have:

1st 2:00 interval: 7:26 pace
2nd 2:00 interval: 7:51 pace
3rd 2:00 interval: 8:02 pace
4th 2:00 interval: 7:50 pace

Obviously I went out a little fast. And, like I said, I'm not sure what happened during the 5th one. All I know is that the Garmin says I ran the last 3:00 minute rest period at an 8:04 pace. Uh, okay. You can see the full workout stats here: OPRC Riverside Speedwork by snmnstrz21 at Garmin Connect - Details

I had so much fun being out there with the group. I'd never done intervals just for time so that was a nice change as well. Plus, when I'm running in the dark just waiting for my watch to beep it actually makes me push it harder. No finish line in sight. No counting laps. Just running my heart out. In the end I did just under 5 miles. I'm looking forward to doing more of these!