Interval training … yuck

London Marathon Training
Week 7, Day 2

I thought I’d try something different tonight, namely interval training. I’d never attempted it before so I’d no idea if I was doing it right or not but I decided to give it a go anyway.

Not being really sure what to do I thought I’d set the bar pretty low, so went for two minute sprints with one minute recovery times ten. Hmmm, yes, well.

After a warm-up jog the timer went so I set off like a bat out of hell for two minutes (and, yes, Mr. Loaf *was* coincidentally playing on my Spotify playlist at the time!). For 90 seconds or so I thought this was fantastic, I was lifting my knees, striking the ground perfectly and hurtling along at a great rate.

Then I began to wonder if my timing app had crashed. What the hell had happened those final 30 seconds? Would this pain ever end? I’ve nothing left in the tank. I want to be sick. Stop! Stop! Stop!

I didn’t stop ….. but blissfully the buzzer did sound for the end of the first session. Just another nine of them to do. Oh crap.

Because it was my first time I decided to walk between the sprints, albeit briskly. The second sprint wasn’t as bad, but it also wasn’t as fast ….. and so on.

Thankfully I did seem to settle into the ‘sprints’ and even though they weren’t particularly fast I did put everything into them, as totally knackered and drained as I was.

I’m also pretty certain that if I had jogged instead of walked I would have broken my 5k PB, so that’ll be something to build on next time. Obviously jogging will take up more energy than walking and that’ll eat into my sprints but I still reckon I’d have enough left over to improve on my time.

An interesting experiement, all told, but one that actually made me miss doing my midweek hill session! It was hard work, very hard work, but it was supposed to be. If it makes me stronger and builds my stamina then it’ll all be worth it.

London Marathon Training (97.3 miles – 24 runs)
Week 1 – 12.2 miles (4 runs; average 3.05 miles per run)
Week 2 – 9.3 miles (2 runs; average 4.65 miles per run)
Week 3 – 17.7 miles (4 runs; average 4.4 miles per run)
Week 4 – 18.8 miles (4 runs; average 4.7 miles per run)
Week 5 – 14.9 miles (4 runs; average 3.7 miles per run)
Week 6 – 18.7 miles (4 runs; average 4.7 miles per run)
Week 7 – 5.7 miles (2 runs; average 2.85 miles per run)