Let me just say:  I had NO idea how hard this ‘pace run’ workout would be this morning.  I have work to do!

I am following a RunCoach plan to help me train for the marathon in January.  Today, I did my first Pace Run workout.  It looked simple enough.  I only had to do a few drills, run a few strides and then do 6 minutes each of hard running and jogging in one minute alternating increments (did i lose you ’cause that was confusing?)…

Here are the exact exercises:

Warm up

Jog .25 miles (easy enough)

I ran with my husband this morning 🙂

Light Stretch (oops – I forgot to do this one!)

7 drills (NOT EASY…  My ‘high knees’ were sad and the ‘rhythm skip’ wore me out.)

+ 3 strides

On to the Workout:

fast/slow workout, 6 sets – ‘all’ I had to do was run 1 min @ hard pace, walk or jog for 1 min

Yeah.  I had to walk during the jog/walk minute.  After running hard for a minute, I had such a hard time catching my breath!  Whoa!  This was a shocker.  I’m not sure why I was shocked since I NEVER run at a hard pace.  I was huffing and puffing like the old wolf in Goldilocks.  It was a mess.  I managed to run hard(ish) the entire minute on the first 2 sets, then the third, fourth and fifth the hard running was more like an aggressive jog.  On the last one, I ran hard trying to finish strong.

Cool Down:

jog .25 miles – I did not want to start jogging after walking that last minute.  I wanted to use the walk to the car as part of the jog, but DH didn’t seem to have that same idea, so we jogged it.  I was beat down.

So, I’ve got work to do.  I’ll be doing this twice a week for the next couple of months.  I may shave 2 minutes off my mile before it’s all over.  One can dream, right?