Catching up

 On Wednesday 17/02 - I was out at 5:35 a.m. and was out at 06:00 a..m. to do my interval workout with my brother.We headed out to the turia park. The plan was to run 1 x 1600m, 800m jog recovery, 3 x 800m with 400m jog recovery. I warmed up 15 mins including 5 x 50m strides. Then the workout started, the plan for the mile was to run well sub the 7:31, that I did 3 weeks ago. The real goal was to run at sub 7:15. I did 7:11, and my brother did 7:15. I crossed the first  km in 4:33 still cold, but it seems that I warmed up nicely over the last 600m. The breathing was more labored than I would have liked, but felt overall nonethe less. Then did 3 x 800m in 3:26, in the second one I mistakenly stopped at the 600m mark, but once my brother shouted at me, I realized that I was wrong and started running again until completing the 800m. Time of that repeat including the stop was 3:23- 3:25. It was dark and I set my point that the stopping point was that for that repeat, generally that is the point where we stop when doing 1000m repeats, yes I am getting old and mindless lol. In the last repeat I pushed it a bit, but maintained good form. breathing was a bit fast, but I felt fresh overall for the workout, so I consider that a success. My brother was very happy with his splits also, He did sub 3:28 all the 800m repeats, which is faster than we should, but we alwas have trained faster than we race. Did 15 mins cool down to home. Did 10-11k total for the day.

Thursday 18/02 - I was up again at 5:35 a.m. started running at 6:05 a.m. with my brother and we did again the "Maximo Gomez" route. Felt pretty good and easy. Did 52:20 for 8.2 - 8.3k. Felt pretty good. Kept the effort easy to absorb the prior`s day workout.

Friday - OFF

Today I was up at 6:10 a..m. Did some business in the bathroom so I ended up going out at 7:10 a.m. The plan for today was to do a 6k tempo run in the port with my brother. We are liking that route for our long runs, so we gave it a try for our tempo runs, trusting his GPS watch. We did pretty good and the terrain is pancake flat, perfect for tempo runs. I warmed up 19 mins total, icluded 6 x 50m strides to warm up fine. We started near a big watch ( like the ben watch in London) and then did 3k out and 3k back in the maritime path. Great views and enviroment eventhough there is not a lot of people that early. The first km was very slow in 5:05 or so for me, my brother was a couple of seconds back. We started the first 400-500m very conservative, but after checking that it was that slow, I accelerated inmeediately and found my rythm. I no longer looked at the watch though, just told my brother to let me know when we had to turn around, He passed me after the 2.5k so he was making the pace, I was just a step  back and when he said to turn around I did, then tried to speed up a bit for the second half or at least keep the same effort. He was ahead for 5-6 seconds in the 5k mark, but I catched him with 400m to go and stayed at his side and we basically finished together in 29:39 for the 6k. Although his watch marked 29:41. First half according to my watch was 14:52, I pressed the split button without looking at halfway point. I felt pretty good. The breathing was a bit labored, but I felt good overally and pancake flat terrain helped a lot. Sometimes in the Turia there are ups and down and the terrain is not that even and flat. Also the views here are much wider, you can see a lot fared, so when you have 600,m to go you can see the finish line. In the turia park you can basically see 100-200m ahead at the most. I really liked the experience. Its the first time we do a tempo run outside of the Turia park and the blasco park. Very satisfied with this workout. Did 17:42 for cool down and felt great in the cool down. The last 5 mins were at a good pace ( at my normal easy pace or even faster and felt very strong). Around 12k total or so.

Tomorrow again we will do 1 hour and 45 mins in the port views. Thats the beauty of the morning runs, you basically have the city for you!