Practice intervals - take one

Chicago Marathon 18 week training plans started this week..exciting! As posted before, I'm doing the Hanson Marathon Method advanced plan. I'll talk about the plan Thursday..maybe.

The first few week of the plan has no hard runs. I looked to next week and Tuesday has a 12x400 meter run, with a 1.5 warm up and cool down. Today I decided to take a stab at it to get a better feeling of the effort I need to muster.

I feel pretty comfortable adjusting the plan to let it catch up to me. I've spent the last few months restructuring my running to mimic training, 50ish miles a week, 1 long run, two hard runs, 3 recovery runs.

With that positive thinking,  I woke up and felt like having a DNS.  Very tired body and mind. First step out of bed, Achilles felt tight. Dramatic me - one more step and it pops .. it is over. Few more steps, all better. I'm still going to refocus on Achilles stretches.

I used +Endomondo to set up an interval plan, which is pretty nice. I used miles instead of meters, so I actually did .25 mile intervals, which is 402.3 meters! Close enough! Here is what the set up looks like:

The run was hard. The effort level is a challenge, not having visual sights as to when your interval ends takes a bit to get used to, but the hardest part, at least for me, is the sinking feeling in your gut after a few intervals. After every interval, I start to question if I have to go to the bathroom.  Strength and fatigue I can fight through, a scary bowel movement... I cannot. I would say this held up my times more than anything.

My splits were okay to a little slow at times when I felt like nature growling. Glad I did a practice run at this. Next week - wake up earlier to make sure my stomach is settled, and run a little harder. Here is the breakdown:

You can follow pretty easy to see where my stomach started to get mad. And if you were running next to me, you would have heard some expletives after every red portion on my run. Overall though, good run.

The weather was gorgeous, ~60, really nice sunrise, light breeze, lots of people out. I started a few minutes later today as I was waiting for my GPS to connect. When I caught up to Mr. V on his walk, he was worried that I wasn't out yet. Funny seeing everyone on different spots on their run.

I tried to nab a few greetings, not as good results as yesterday. Same results as previous weeks - south of Addison, everyone is more focused on looking for money on the ground than keeping their head up!

I tried to take a photo when I finished my run to show I don't look as peppy as my blog, but I looked like a wet dog- DELETE - .

Did you run this morning? Or running in the heat later?

Are intervals your friend?

OH! And how can I forget - Just say Jenn!  (Fellow Chicago Running Blogger) will be on WGN News at 9pm CST on Friday! I saw a promo for "Chicago's Very Own" this morning and it was her! I emailed her to confirm! Watch it!