Speeding Up My Legs

The Boston Marathon experience had one huge impact on my attitude towards running and training for future marathons. I want to train hard, I want to do my absolute best and I will devote everything to be strong. You can't cheat on endurance sports training! But what was the outcome of my attitude? We started to build up my mileage slowly with my fastest steady state runs at 8 min/mile (5 min/km) and other runs slower. Last week I finally crossed the 100 km per week (62+ miles) imaginary line of achievement! Yay! I have been also working on loosing weight and becoming stronger.

Getting under your "optimal body weight" or at least that is what I call easy with the amount of running I am doing. You know, I can eat almost anything and have 58 kg (128 lb), but getting below is really hard. And being the gourmet I am, it has been a huge battle that still doesn't have a clear winner :) So after building up my mileage, last week The Coach started with some speedwork - 400 m reps. I have to clarify that I am not doing these on track and there is a turnaround in the middle of the distance, so on a flat 400 I might be a little faster... Last week I managed to do 6 sets and I felt like dying in each of them. Check out the Garmin stats here:

I felt pretty good going for my training session on Tuesday and I was pretty correctly guessing that it won't be as "easy" as 6 reps this time. So 8x 400 m it was with a longer rest in the middle. It was quite muddy, so I was permitted to be little slower this time - around 1:35. I was pleasantly surprised that I managed to go through my session almost perfect like "in the books". I started pretty slow, because sometimes I tend to go really fast in the first rep, than I have all the lactate flooding my body and I am screwed for the second half of the training. I was slowly adding more gaz for each new rep, but I was only doing "all out" effort for the last two and I managed to keep on speeding up through all the session. Very happy with myself, have to admit! The only "cloud" on the sky is that The Coach told me that it will only mean something when I am able to do like 16 of these 400 m reps in one session. WOOPS! Can't imagine that right now, but I also couldn't imagine running a marathon ... running sub 45 min 10 km etc. So I keep on dreaming and keep on doing my best and striving for my best self :)

So this is a great app for iOS (iPhone and iPad) also Android and you can also find the videos on YouTube. I really do love this one - it only takes like 10 mins (12 mins for the Level 2) and it gives you great ab workout. The most important thing: if you keep up with the schedule, you will soon see the results!!! The Coach saw them without me telling him I changed anything in my routine... I am starting week 2 on Level 2 and I am not able to finish the workout in the scheduled time, but I can see some progress :)