Town Lake Fartleks
The weather was decent this morning - temperature was a touch warm, but the wind coming off the lake was still pretty dramatic. Today I decided to copy an exercise from Alex, doing intervals during the seven mile close loop around Town Lake. I did a one mile warmup, then started on the intervals. The plan was to do three sets of “5 minutes on, 2 minutes off” and then six sets of “3 minutes on, 1 minute off.”
This workout felt different than a normal set of intervals for two reasons. First, doing these on the trail - a soft surface with traffic gentle hills - is quite different from doing them on a track. Second, I didn’t let myself stop running the entire time. Usually I’ll walk for recovery, this time I kept running - albeit at a pretty slow 10:00 pace.
Of course, on today when I’m relying on it, my Forerunner decides to get flaky on me. Here’s the paces as best as I can get them from TopoFusion:
| Distance | ? | ? | .68 | .41 | .4 | .39 | .38 | .39 | .38 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pace | ? | ? | 7:21 | 7:19 | 7:30 | 7:54 | 7:30 | 7:54 | 7:30 |
My feelings? This was fun. Different, and challenging, but fun. Its closest to fartleks, but different mainly because of the length of the speed portions. My legs felt strong throughout, although my breathing was suffering a bit from about the four mile mark, making the 3/1 intervals more challenging. My knees are a little sore as well, just from the increased running I’ve been doing lately; I don’t think its anything to be concerned about.
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Nov 3rd 2004
11:13 AM
hmm…a long version of a fartlek, sounds challenging and fun. what is the difference in pace during the speed portion?
Nov 3rd 2004
10:12 PM
When I did them, my fast sections were 7-minute pace or faster and my slow ones were 9 or 10 minute pace. Each person is different, though. In my opinion it’s important to go slow enough that you can maintain the paces for the whole workout. On this workout, it’s tempting to go faster at the end with the shorter intervals, but the recovery times are shorter, too, so it evens out. I guess we have to wait for Richard to get his GPS and tell us his times!
Nov 3rd 2004
10:15 PM
Good workout Richard. Alex has some good stuff!
Hey, I’m not sure if it is just me or something on your site but for about the last month or more, my information does not get saved. I don’t think the cookies are working for some reason with your site? It’s like that here and at work. (mac at home, pc at work). I’m not sure if others are having the same problem. Just thought I’d let you know.
Nov 3rd 2004
10:28 PM
I am having the same problem with these pages not remembering me…
Nov 4th 2004
9:02 AM
Yeah, I don’t know what the deal is with the memory settings. I haven’t change anything in a while, so I’m not really sure what’s going on - I figured it was just me, actually, since I’d upgraded to XP-SP2.
My Forerunner just has a nice big solid block for the first portion of this run. I remember something flashing onto the screen about deleting laps, but it was gone before I could read it. Grumble.
I did the loop in 1:02:29 - that includes warmup and cooldown - for an 8:59 overall pace. From looking at the data, I was slowing down to a 10:00-11:00 pace on my recoveries, especially near the end. I also had more than a few of those 3 minute intervals hit on uphills as well. Made me sigh a little when one ended just before the nice big downhill on Riverside.
Nov 4th 2004
9:25 AM
Richard, I usually just get a lap mark at the start of the fartlek section, after the warmup, and just record the average pace for the faster miles. It’s easy enough to compare for future similar workouts. I don’t want to worry about hitting laps for all the individual fartlek intervals while I’m running. I do a lap mark at the end of the last fast bit, so that I know the point where cooldown starts. But, we’re all different in what numbers are important to us.
Nov 4th 2004
12:10 PM
Thanks, Jay. I try to get more precise than that, because I’m usually wearing my GPS anyway and - when it doesn’t act up like this - I can get the paces with very little effort. I don’t normally hit lap markers for true fartleks, but since these were timed anyway it wasn’t a big deal.