Quick background: I've been running off and on for about the past 18 years (damn!), mostly off and with very little consistency. It's only been for about the past year that I've actually made it a regular habit to run several times a week.
After a recent race this weekend (34th Annual Holiday Run & Walk for Health - 3 mile. Race report coming soon.), I spoke with one of the moms whose 6 year old daughter ran the 1 mile race and actually placed first in her age group last year. Later on, I checked the results from last year, and this 6 year old, then 5, ran the 1 mile in 10:08! Not only that, but her sisters, then 8 and 10, ran it in 8:49 and 7:52 respectively. Dayam!
With that in my head, I vowed to do speedwork at the gym last night. I told a friend of mine about it and he said, "So you want to get faster so you can beat children? Heh. Good luck with that."
I was going to do a short tempo run. 1 mile at easy pace (11:00/mile), 2 miles at hard pace (10:00/mile), 1 mile at easy pace (11:00/mile).
I couldn't even run the first freakin mile! At the freakin easy pace! Talk about mental blocks. So for the next two miles I just did fartleks. I would do 1 minute of 7.0 (8:34/mile)or 7.5 (8:00/mile) alternating with 1 minute of walking to recover. Sometimes I would throw in an 8.0 (7:30/mile), but I never made it to a full minute with those, maybe 40 seconds. After a total of 3 miles on the treadmill, I figured that was enough and decided to end it with a nice easy mile at 5.5 (11:00/mile). Even that made me tired and I stopped at 3.5 miles.
Super disappointing run. Beaten by children.
Okay, in my defense, I think I've been taking on too much and am burning out. My previous days' schedule looked like this:
Friday - Rest Day
Saturday - 3 mile race, Insanity® Plyo
Sunday - 45 minutes of weights, hour spin class, Insanity® Cardio Power & Resistence
I'm thinking the double/triple workouts might be a tad too much. At least that's what I'm telling myself.
Sheesh. One freakin mile! I couldn't even run one freakin mile!
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