Experimentation

After having our planned fourteen-mile run thwarted by Mother Nature, we called an audible the next day.  Instead of doing the fourteen as intended, A suggested that instead we try a training exercise he just read about in a running magazine I brought home from work.

It's a pretty basic interval: run a mile, walk a minute.  Even though we haven't run longer than twelve miles thus far in this marathon training cycle, hoping the walking breaks would give us more stamina, we set out to cover eighteen miles yesterday morning.

My hope was that the miles would be run at pace or faster.  This turned out not to be the case.  The miles got progressively slower and on average were about fifteen-seconds off  what we would need to run to make our goal.  A thought it was because it took us time to build up speed after our minute walks.  I thought it was because the route had a lot of elevation gain.  The truth is probably because we were just tired.

I found myself both desperate for the walking breaks but also dreading them.  I was disheartened by how long the miles felt and how quickly the minute melted away.  By the end of our eighteen-mile trek, I was both mentally and physically sore.  My lower back was in revolt.  My reserves, which I thought were so well stocked with an enormous Thanksgiving meal and equally enormous leftovers, were depleted.  My mental focus, questionable.

Despite the struggle, A felt the experiment was a success.  We went from twelve to eighteen miles in a week.  Strangely, including our sixteen minutes walking, our pace was faster than our previous marathon - by a lot.  And it broke up a training routine which gets stale quickly.  Who knows if we'll do another interval run like this again, but it was definitely worth a try.