PowerBar Audio Workout

I had my first tempo run scheduled for today and downloaded these free workouts to my iPod a couple of weeks ago, I had even tried them out a little and really liked them. As my plan didn’t really tell me how to do this tempo run I decided to go with the tempo intervals, but not to do the whole workout as I was just supposed to run eight miles.
It was cold this morning which helped me to run fast. I’d had a half a PowerBar and a big cup of coffee right after I got up and set out a cup of water and a PowerGel by our mailbox to refuel during the workout. I was ready to go!
The run included a 10 minute warm-up, for 20 sec strides and 4-, 6-, 8-, 10-, and 12-minute tempo intervals with 2 minutes of easy running to recover in between the intervals.
It was so much fun to run and I did almost all of them until I got to 7.5 miles which was after about half of the 12-minute interval. I probably could have finished that one also, but as I just started the marathon training I didn’t want to do more than my plan suggested.
I had planned to run them at marathon pace (7:30/mile), but that seemed to easy for today, so I ran them in 7:14/mile, 7:11/mile, 7:07/mile, 7:03/mile and 6:55/mile. I think it’s pretty good that I was able to get faster and faster at each interval although they were getting longer and longer.
I’m so glad to be back to marathon training. I didn’t exactly miss it in December during my recovery phase, but now I’m enjoying it a lot to run fast again.
Recovery from a long year of running and a strenuous marathon was good and necessary, but now I’m ready to run again!

See more progress on: Run the Boston Marathon in 3:20