Fart What?

Last night I asked Tony if he had ever done a Fartlek. His response was, "Fart what?" I recall hearing my dad use this term ions ago and had heard runners talk about speed work, but I didn't know it was called a Fartlek. I'll have to do some research as to where the term actually comes from.

Today I had to do my first of many Fartlek workouts. It consisted of a one mile warm-up followed by another mile of 20 seconds fast running with a recovery jog/walk and continuing with a final one mile cool-down. I had asked someone in the running group about the best way to do this because if not given a set time for recovery, knowing myself, I would slack even more and convince myself, "Oh, you're not recovered yet." One gentleman in the group who happened to have frozen icicles on his beard (which made it very difficult to focus during our conversation) informed me to just pay attention to my heart rate monitor, needless to say, I don't have a heart rate monitor.

Instead, I just tried to listen to my body and used markers on the street to judge if I should speed up or slow down. That method seemed to work out okay. I think I may have done a little more than the 3 miles the plan calls for and finished in 32.11.

Ellie got to join me on this run and was quite surprised during the middle portion when I was actually running at a pace she enjoyed. She looked back at me as if to ask, "Wow, where did that come from?"

The workout was good and I think I can use Ellie as an indicator of the intensity because she has been lounging around the rest of the day. (Look at those heavy eyelids!)

I am going back to yoga tonight and I hope that it is truly the 60 minutes it is supposed to be because I really want some time to enjoy the rest of my day off (Thanks MLK). I have a 6 miler scheduled for Wednesday, 3 on Friday, and 11 with the running group on Sunday.