Workout By Effort

Upon awakening this morning I could hear the howl of the winds. I never saw an official wind gust report but they were blowing. If today would have been Grandma's marathon the course records would have been long gone. I've mentioned this for years and the pattern of the winds stay the same. Strong winds out of the NE, ie: tailwind on Grandma's point to point course, then sometime in early June they begin to shift out of the West. It's just not right!

Once I got moving on my warm up I realized that the track would be frustrating as I'm sure the splits would be way off, so I hit the roads and turned the workout into an effort-based fartlek. I didn't look at my watch at all during the repeats and only monitored for time of interval. I managed to run 2 1/2 repeats into the wind and the remainder with the tailwind. My legs felt great and any doubts I had yesterday of running hard were out the window. Overall with the tough conditions I was very pleased with the results.

Here is a breakdown of the morning:

warm up for 3 miles

5 X 4 minutes with 90 sec. rest

4:00 5:42 pace into wind

4:00 5:45 pace into wind

4:00 5:30 pace 1/2 of each

4:00 5:20 pace with wind

4:00 5:22 pace with wind

warm down ~30 minutes

Total: 1:18:00 11 miles