Did another set of intervals at the track. I do two miles, running around a 6′ pace every other quarter mile. The gaps I take as easy as necessary. One question is whether to allow myself to walk — this probably lets me go harder on the intervals, but does mean an overall slower time.

I managed to improve my interval times this week, but took the “rest” sections slower, so my overall pace was much lower.

Run is on Strava.

Set a new PR for the mile today: 6:45.

The following chart shows my speed progress along my favorite 1 mile route. The y-axis is pace in minutes per mile, and it’s oriented so that up means lower minutes per mile (so faster pace). The x-axis just counts runs so far, so the actual distance between points doesn’t reflect the time between runs.

You can see there isn’t much of a trend in the raw data points. Indeed, my previous best time (on this course) was a 7 minute mile one month ago. But perhaps the moving average overlaid by Strava is a better, “filtered” indication of my underlying ability.

What were things that happened differently this time (not all may matter, of course?)

• Caffeine
• Using my asthma inhaler, two pumps (more on this later)
• Waiting 45 minutes to wake up before going for a run (doing household tasks and email during that time)
• Running fast enough that my half mile time was above PR pace, so I felt motivated to set a record when running back home
• Cold weather — it was 55º and raining. My hands could barely type when coming back in.
• Sufficient sleep, but not too much (perhaps 9 hours?)
• No workout the previous day

One thing that didn’t seem to matter, this time or the last PR I set, was having breakfast. I generally find that eating a lot the night before is important for good running, but I had a fairly empty stomach in this case. Maybe the mile distance doesn’t really require that much built up energy (glycogen?).

Did another 1 mile run, a bit below target pace, 7:11.

I’ve actually noticed a slight trend slower, and I wonder whether it’s due to cutting back my running/biking time to avoid injury. In any case, I’m happy to accept that because I’m going to build up my mileage soon enough.

After a week off due to illness, I’m ready to get back with exercising.

I just completed a 1mile run in 7:15. A bit slower than I’d like, but I felt tired and I think it was probably just a one-off poor performance.

I’m also going to look into getting treated for exercise-induced asthma. It looks like I have this.

As mentioned in my last post on shin splints, I’ve been trying to increase my running distance slowly. This weekend I did a 2 mile “long run,” and it felt great.

My goal, of course, is eventually to run a 5k at a 7 minute/mile pace. Since I can already do 1 mile at that pace, I figured I would start by running 2 miles at an 8 minute pace. It didn’t seem that difficult, although I ran into some fatigue coming back home; ended up doing 1.9(9?) miles at a 7′ 52″ pace.

I guess my next goal is to run a whole 5k at the 8 minute pace, and/or to run 1 mile in 6:30, or 2 miles in 15 minutes.

Since I’ve been having shin splints recently, I made a chart of my running activity to see what was causing it. It looks like I went from running around 1 mile/week (during the winter) suddenly up to 11 miles/week. In the 7 days leading up to feeling pain in my legs, I actually ran 15.8 miles.

So, clearly, I need to ramp up my running more slowly, maybe at a rate of one or two miles per week.

In the last seven days, I’ve run 3 miles. I’ll probably try to do one more run this week, perhaps on Saturday, for two miles (this can be my “long” run).

Yesterday I ran a mile at a 7:07 pace, which wasn’t bad for me. That’s on Strava.

Didn’t have much time to exercise today, but I figured another a sub-7-min mile would at least help me maintain my fitness. (Missed yesterday — this week has been completely nuts and I actually did this run around 9:30pm.)

Felt pretty good about the pace, I went a bit too fast in the beginning because I couldn’t really track my pace in the dark.

Run is on Strava.