Yesterday evening, after work I went to the track with my hunnay and L’il D for some fartleks. I hadn’t done any of these for at least 3 years. The first time I did them, I ended up pulling a muscle and it put a hamper on my training. Fartleks are exercises in which you alternate your speed between an all out anaerobic sprint and an easy aerobic jog. Fartleks are good for aerobic and anaerobic conditioning since both sides of the fitness fence are hit.
Fast forward to yesterday at the track.
Well, I figured that part of the reason for the injury the first time around was because I had not warmed up properly. I came to that determination from “replaying the tape” in my head, and going over what happened that fateful day 3 years ago.
You’d think that I would learn from my mistakes, but I didn’t.
I ignored the whole warming up thing yesterday. After walking one lap, I started the farklets. 14 repeats later, the session ended. Basically I was sprinting the straights and walking or jogging really slowly around the turns. I was surprised that I didn’t really lose much speed as the repeats progressed and I was also surprised that I was wanting to run more on the turns instead of walking the turns as the repeats progressed.
I did start to get a little tight on my right hamstring, but I attributed that to my lack of warm up. All in all it was a good fun time out at the track.
I’m looking forward to doing it again next week. Specially since the session was a bit on the short side for gaining all of the benefits of the fartleks.
Run Stats:
Distance: 10 laps of 1/4 mile 2.5 miles
Time: 21 minutes
Noteworthy: Fartleks rule! I am surprisingly sore today from them. On a different note, I think I need a new pair of shoes, perhaps some new Brooks Addiction 7s are in store.
Rafael is planning on completing his first trail ultra marathon before the year 2010 is out. He plans on running several shorter distance races between now and then and he also wants to lose 100 lbs of his weight along the way to accomplishing that goal.
He keeps track of his training on his training and weight loss blog at fattrailrunner.com
