Speed workout, week 2.

This morning I made a fun discovery on our treadmill: it has pre-programmed speed training workouts!  My training schedule actually had me doing a 5 mile run at my goal race pace.  That seemed a little daunting, since I've set my goal at 9 minute miles, that means I would have had to run 5 miles on the treadmill set to 6.8mph!  As I said last week, running on the treadmill seems so much harder, I'm not sure I could hold that pace for that long.  So instead, I've decided that until the weather clears up and I'm doing my speed workouts outside, I'm going to do intervals using the treadmill.  I started this morning with a 20 minute program that topped out at 4.0mph, and did that as a warm-up.  Then I did a 30 minute program that gradually works up to 6.0, then goes from 4.5 to 6.0mph in regular intervals for 6 repeats, then a gradual taper back down to 3.0mph for a couple of minutes to cool down.  This feels like a great way for me to work on increasing my speed, because it's helping me become familiar with how my body feels as I change paces, and what it should feel like to go closer to my goal pace.  Hopefully, when I get outside to run, I will be better able to gauge my pace just by how it feels, instead of allowing myself to slip back into a slower pace.  After the speed intervals, I repeated the first 20 minute workout as additional cool down, even though part of it was running, it felt like a cool down.  In the end, I did a little over 4 miles and 70 minutes total on the treadmill and then did 12 minutes on the elliptical.