I coerced Elaine and Deb into doing a speed workout with me today.

Last week I started doing 1/4 mile sprints at Griggs Reservoir. That first day I did 6 reps. This week was a little harder — the asphalt was hot, my shins were really tight and there was a little too much car traffic. We ended up doing only 4 reps.

We started with a slow 15:08 warm-up mile, then did our sprints: 2:57, 3:08, 3:11, 3:07. Does it make sense that our first 1/4 mile would have been 11:48 if we kept it up for a whole mile?! The second rep would be 12:32?!! Geez! Is it really possible that I could have been moving that fast? That is quite a bit faster than what I was last week. No wonder my shins were sore!

Afterward, we started out doing a one-mile cool down. After walking half a mile, we decided to go a little farther to make our total cool down closer to almost 1.5-miles.

I’m pretty excited I was able to walk so fast! I felt stiff and my shins were sore for most of the sprinting. During the last rep, I tried to relax a little and worked on being more “smooth.” I felt a whole lot better, but still had a little shin pain.

Total mileage was a little over 3 miles and we finished our workout in exactly one hour.
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Note to me: Temps in the mid-70s, but it was hotter on the asphalt. I wore the Chinese racewalking shoes I use for speed, shorts and a technical shirt. Wish I had worn a tank. For the first 3 laps, I had intense shin pain, and just could not make my legs go faster. Felt stiff and uncomfortable trying to go faster. We took 3-min breaks between reps mostly because of my shins. Tried stretching in between, but it didn’t seem to work.

Hills tomorrow.

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