I headed over to the Parkway this afternoon for my interval session, workout #1 for the week. (Yes, there are more.) The first thing I noticed was how WARM it was outside. Yuck! My two mile warm up was spent worrying about how this would go, feeling slow and considering skipping it all together. I mean, my week ahead is pretty scary between my running, family and work schedule.

Yesterday I spent the morning working hard finishing up a book, writing a review and sending interview questions to the authors. The book went on sale this morning, The Long Run, and it was so incredibly inspirational that I was compelled to send the author, Matt Long, a personal note about how touched I was by his story. For me, that’s saying a lot because this is something I never do. Anyway, I was as mentally exhausted by 1 pm yesterday as I was after today’s speed session. And that’s just the first thing checked off my list for the week. I was happy to find an email this morning inviting me to drinks on Friday night with the authors. That should be fun.

If I make it through this week in one piece and without having a mental breakdown, that would be nice. Tomorrow I may just have to break down and hit up Mr. Treadmill since I have a press conference to attend, the timing of which does not coincide with my daughter’s preschool hours. Therefore, I will have her with me and will have no opportunity to run.

So, I’m out in the Parkway warming up and coming to grips that this might not be a good workout today with this heat and my stress level but come up with a plan of approach. I’ll start off easy and try to peck away at my time. If I’m not feeling it or it’s not going well, I’ll stop right there and finish out the run easy.

Okay, let’s go …

The workout: 2x(3×800)

Goal: Start off with an easy interval pace of 7:00 and decrease by 5 seconds for each interval so that the final interval is at a 6:30 pace.

The results:

1st set
3:30 (7:00)
3:26 (6:52)
3:17 (6:34)

2nd set
3:11 (6:22)
3:13 (6:26)
3:01 (6:02)

Thoughts:

• That first interval was tough! I was feeling hot as it was in the low 70′s and I thought I was going to throw up because I had just eaten. I know, I should have timed my meal better than I did today but I was hungry. What can I say?
• Second interval, cool. Maybe I can do this – slowly decrease on each repeat – but this was little more aggressive than I was planning. The next one is going to feel hard.
• Third one, not so hard. Maybe I’m finally warmed up.
• Quarter mile recoveries between repeats.
• Half mile repeat between sets.
• Second set, okay, where the hell did that just come from?
• Second interval, I’m starting to feel tired. It always seems like that next to last repeat is always one of my hardest.
• Last repeat, hot damn! That felt awesome. I was totally in a groove on this one. Best one ever!
• A photographer from the local newspaper was out taking photos today for tomorrow’s paper. He got some shots of me and then tracked me down to get my name. I told him he had to include my website, we’ll see if that makes it in tomorrow’s paper ;)
• Ran into my new friend whom I ran with last week. He finished out my run with me and we made plans to meet up again on Thursday.
• 10.41 miles total for the day.