Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Accidental Speed Training

So, if you have been reading the blog, you probably already know about my extreme hatred for the treadmill. But after yesterday's cold weather run from hell, I decided that I was going to do my short run (4 miles) on the treadmill today.

What I have found on the days where I use the treadmill, I just want to get the run done as fast as possible. So rather than doing a regular pace run the whole time, I have been doing intervals of walking/sprinting. Today, I did intervals between a walk at 3.4 and a run at 7. I alternated each minute. What I found was that all of a sudden it was a lot easier to run at 7 than the last time I tried to run at 7, I even ran at 8 a couple of times. I ended up finishing my entire 4 miles in 46 minutes, which for me is about 2 minutes faster per mile than I usually run (I am a slower runner and usually run about 13 minute miles.)

I started doing these interval runs a couple of times a week about a month ago. I have been noticing that I've been taking some time off of my runs outside but I never noticed the amount until this week. This week I have taken entire minutes off of miles outside without feeling like I am pushing myself any differently. I finally realized today that it must be this interval training I am doing. My body is just naturally getting used to running faster. How cool is that?

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