Mile Repeats - 8/27

Today's workout was the 3 x mile repeats, as depicted in week 6 of the half marathon schedule (here). It has been a long time since I've done intervals, and as soon as the real hard work started, I remembered why it has been a long time - they suck, they are painful, and I hate doing them.

However, I have a goal in mind and some degree of accountability now that I've let the cat out of the bag and signed myself up for this half marathon.

Anyhow, since the point of this type of exercise is to get your body used to working hard for sustained periods of time, I actually did a 1 mile warm up run (I usually dont) to get the period of relatively low heart rate out of the way. This way when I did my first mile repeat, I could shoot for a target HR and not burn out too quickly due to the HR ramp-up lag time. I decided that my target HR during the mile repeats would be about 170, and during the rest jogs, I would try to get it down to the low 150's sustained.

So with a loop around the house of about 1.1 miles, here are the results (some information missing, as I was figuring out the lap function on my HR monitor during the run, and suffering from lack of oxygen to the brain at the end, causing me to forget to hit the lap button):

Warm up lap - 10:18 1.1 miles
Mile 1 repeat - 8:54 1.1 miles avg HR up to this point was 155
Slow jog rest - 2:43 .27 miles HR: 157
Mile 2 repeat - 9:25 1.1 miles HR: 168
Slow jog rest ~ 5:00 .45 miles
Mile 3 repeat ~ 9:12 1.1 miles avg HR for rest jog and repeat was 167
Total distance: 5.12 milesTotal time: 45:33
Avg HR: 162