Class 8

Running intervals as a relay team of two serves the purpose of giving you equal time for the run and the rest. I’ve found that best results from this training come when that’s the case. Too little rest and you can’t maintain a good pace from segment to segment; too much and you go too fast.

Tuesday’s runs will reach three and four miles, on the riverside paths. With distances growing (and time needed to run them increasing), we’ll have no separate warmup for the remaining Tuesdays.

TODAY’S 3 X ONE-THIRD-MILE INTERVALS

(with total time for one mile and comparison to your first week’s nonstop mile; target was to go faster; if you didn’t time yourself, I divided your team result in half)

Erik B. – 6:50 (-44 sec.)

Olivia – 6:52 (-1:26)

Amina D. – 8:06 (-1:56) day’s 2^nd most improved

Houston – 5:47 (no target)

Tori – 6:16 (-52 sec.)

Bella – 6:52 (-26 sec.)

Joey – 7:48 (-2:44) day’s most improved, earning extra credit

Leticia – ran untimed

Aminah K. – 8:06 (-1:52) day’s 3^rd most improved

Scott – 6:16 (-1:05)

Jessica – ran untimed

James S. – 6:50 (-1:02)

Eric S. – 5:20 (-1:06)

Eleanor – 7:48 (-1:03)

LESSON 8: TAKING TIME

Your second most valuable piece of equipment, after shoes, is.... no, not shorts and not T-shirt. You can wear other clothes than those. Your next most vital item is a watch. Buy a digital model with a stopwatch feature, and make time your main way of keeping score. Time can make you an instant winner by telling exactly how fast you ran a distance, and maybe how much you improved your personal record (“PR,” in runner-talk). Another, more subtle value of the watch: It lets you run by time – by minutes instead of miles. This has several benefits: freeing you from plotting and measuring courses, because minutes are the same length anywhere... easing pressure to run faster, because you can’t make time pass any faster... finishing at the assigned time limit no matter your pace, which settles naturally into your comfort zone when you run by time.