Morning R pace Intervals

 Yesterday I took the day off. As I said previously I am running 5 times per week and its working very well for me, I am progressing nicely and doing better each workout and feeling fresh going into my workouts. Also increasing my long run every 3 weeks. 

Today I was up at 6 a.m., but headed out the door still dark at 07:00 a.m.The plan for today was 1 x 800m at mile race pace or faster, my brother wanted to do 3:10 or less and then we would do 400m repeats at R pace ( R pace is around mile race pace). Knowing the that first repetition would be the 800m and it was going to be fast, my normal warm up was not going to be enough since as I get older I need more to warm up. Instead of doing 15 mins including 5 x 500m strides. I did 25 mins easy and after those 25 mins, where the last 10 mins were easy, but faster than normal to loose the legs. After those 25 mins were over, I did 6 x 15 seconds with 45 seconds rest walking before starting the next one. I generally do 5 x 50m strides ( around 15 seconds as well), but I dont walk between them, I just jog between them and I include them within the 15 mins. This time, I did the strides after the 25 mins were done. After the strides I waited for my brother to finish his warm up for 5+ mins. 

Then the workout started and we went out hard, He went out harder than me and basically was ahead of me the whole repeat, he beated me by one step. My goal was to run fast, relaxed and without losing my form. We did 3:04. His watch read 3:05, its weird because he beated me by one step. I was huffing and puffing a lot and after the 500m my legs were heavy,the last 200m were a struggle, but I did not lose my form. I also found that I was not enough warmed up, but I think that is part of myself getting older, I was not that cold either the extra easy mins of warm up plus the strides helped. I normally start very slow in the first repeat on my intervals despite doing strides within the warm up.

After the 800s we jog 800m to recover and then did 6 x 400m with 400m jog recovery and I felt that as the workout went by we were feeling better and getting looser. My splits were 1:38,1:36,1:31,1:33,1:33, and in the last one I was feeling loose enough and I wanted to crack 90 seconds, I did 84.42 and I had to divert from the path as there were people going my direction and people coming, so I had to run in the grass and I think I lose a second, but no biggies, still pretty surprised with that split and how good I felt. I am sure the long recoveries between the repeats really helped. I am very satisfied with this workout and finally feel that I am making progress, I did not run sub 90 seconds in 400m probably in almost 1.5 years. Then did 15:30 for cool down to home. Total volume was around 12k. My brother said that we did 6k including the recoveries, plus my 4k warm up + 2k cool down. We did pretty good today and I felt very strong. Very happy for my brother as he was very happy too. I think he can run much better than the 6:34 he did 2 weeks ago. Weather was fine.

Those morning runs are really helping and I am enjoying them a lot as well.