I ran in the sun today!

For a couple glorious days, the sun has been shining in the Portland area. It's not warm, but at least it's dry! I LOVE the rain and gray skies, but enough is enough. This is getting crazy.

I hadn't run in a week - lots of other fun things keeping me busy: spin class, biking and hiking! But I have another race in a couple weeks, so this is no time to slack.


After making my 10K goal on April 9, I decided to add some speed work to my routine before my next race, a quarter-marathon on Mother's Day. Until now, my focus was just on adding distance. Now I'd like to pick up the pace a bit.

I've never done speed work, but my trusty running book has a lot of information and offers a training guide. So here was my interval workout today:

10 minute warmup @ about 10-minute miles
3 minutes @ about 8-minute miles
2 minutes @ about 11-minute miles
2 minutes @ about 8-minute miles
2 minutes @ about 11-minute miles
1 minute @ about 8-minute miles
2 minutes @ about 11-minute miles
10 minutes @ about 10-minute miles

For a grand total of 3.35 miles in 32:23 minutes. That's a lot of 3s!

It felt pretty good, and I'm excited to do more and see what happens :)