*Sonic the Hedgehog leg spin gif*

[roadrunnertwice]

Ruth and I did speed training again last night, and I am sore.

I'm glad she finally convinced me to join in, because she knows a lot more than me about training up for stuff — she did cross-country in high school, and she's up-to-date on some more modern stuff too on account of doing that marathon back in 2014.

Anyway, the only kind of speed training I knew about was "fartlicks" (or as I call them, "barfies"), but she's got us doing this... actually, I forget the proper name, but it's 400m chunks at a steady pace that's faster than your one-mile pace. Wait, now I remember, it's just called "interval training."

You decide what time you're going to run 400m in (in my case, 1m 35s, which [envelope envelope envelope] would be a 6m 22s mile, which I can't do, [I think]), run it, then rest (walk/jog) for that same amount of time, then repeat. She says you generally do 10-12 repetitions, and I did 9 (our plan was to do 8 but I still had some gas in the tank).

Trying to hit a particular specific pace was wild; I've never done that before. I eventually started getting the hang of it; you have to sort of pay attention to your lean, and how fast you have to kick your leg forward to keep up with yourself, and compare that to what it felt like on your last effort? Tempo of footsteps is probably the way an expert does it, but to me that sounds way harder than angle of lean.

Excited to see what this adds up to, whether it levels me up any faster than would happen otherwise.

Comments

[kamonohashi]

interval days were always our least favorite in cross country/track. they're useful though!

now i just miss running.

and all sports, really.