8×6 minutes, 30 seconds rest

I knew I needed to nail it. The last two weeks have been peppered with rough tempo workouts, stopping-midway, etc.

I also knew that I was unlikely to be able to do this myself. So, I called up the GAC assistant coach, Brenden, and asked if he’d be up for it. No hesitation. He was. Gotta love this guy, he’s always game.

We did a 2.5 mile warm-up together, and I told him about the workout. He knew it was something like 8×6 (we had done 6×6 minutes a few weeks ago together), but bawked at the fact that there was only 30 seconds of rest in between each one :). Ha. Gotta love these long, sustained, little rest workouts :).

I told him before that I’d been having a harder time with this pace lately, and if I was having trouble, we could shorten the reps to 5 minutes each or lengthen the recovery to 1 minute.

We were off. The first three were into the wind, and more uphill. 6:07s for those. Not bad, considering the rain, wind, and incline! I purposely didn’t look at the pace on my watch much — tried to go by “effort”. At 3, we turned back. Now we were around 6:02s, which considering we were going downhill, with the wind, was actually probably slower than the first three, but I didn’t worry about it. I gave myself the option to take a longer rest or shorten the reps during reps 4-8. Do I need the extra 30 secs rest? Do I need to stop earlier? The answer was always “no”. I can do this!

And I did!! What a fabulous workout & confidence booster. This isn’t an easy workout, so it shows how strong I’ve become.

Next up: Gustavus Alumni 5k on Saturday. Hoping for good weather (there’s a stadium record I’d love to chase down!!), but know there’s less than a very slim chance of it… it’s ALWAYS windy, rainy, snowy for their home meets :(. You think I’m kidding? I’m not 🙂