First workout

After Tuesday's day off, I ran 5 miles on Wednesday. Ran about 4 miles, then 5 minutes barefoot, then switched to my brand new Asics Gel Speedstars for strides. The strides felt good, was able to get up to a good speed. Felt good overall today.

Thursday was 4 easy including a mile at the end in my Speedstars with a few pick-ups. Felt fine.

Friday it was time for my first workout, a 3 mile Fartlek meant to begin getting my body comfortable with a faster pace. I ran after lifeguarding most of the day, so I was a bit tired as I made my way over to the trails. Warmed-up for 15 minutes (2 miles), then went into the Fartlek.

I divided the Fartlek roughly into three sections by mile. I started with 1 minute hard, 1 easy for 8 minutes. The hard was probably faster than the 6 minute pace that I was aiming for. I was moving pretty well and didn't feel TOO bad. The recovery started a bit slow, but moved down to around 7:15 pace I'd say. Next was 8 minutes of 2 hard, 2 easy. This time, I was probably right on 6 minute pace for the hard portion and around 7:30 or slower for the easy. I finished with 3 more 1-1's, still faster than 6 on the hard, but not as fast as the first section. 1 mile slow cool-down.

Overall, I feel that the workout went quite well, and I did exactly what I was looking for. Over the next few weeks, I need to work into tempo runs and this is a good start. I will probably do a similar workout to today's twice next week. The week after I'll trade one of those out for a short tempo and then work the distance of that tempo up week-by-week.

My left calf feels all kinds of sore, but I don't think it's anything I can't work though.