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So last night (Monday) Teri and I headed to the ol’ YMCA for a workout . . . I wasn’t much up for a workout after riding 50 miles the day before in the Tour De Pierce, but I felt really good, so I had no excuses. When we got there, I jumped on the treadmill and cranked the speed up to 5.2 MPH. I held that pace for a mile, then dropped down to 3.5 MPH for a quarter of a mile. My intent was to do intervals, so basically for the next 2.1 miles (3.1 miles total, or 5K) I alternated quarter mile intervals with 3.5 MPH walking and 7.0 MPH running. I forgot to bring my chest strap, so I wasn’t able to monitor my heart rate the whole time, but I wanted to see how my heart rate was recovering so I used the handles on the treadmill. At the end of my 7.0 MPH sprints, I was around 155 – 157 BPM, which is at the high end of my Aerobic zone according to the machine. Just before starting the sprints, after the 3.5 MPH walk, my HR was down to about 119 – 122 BPM, which in my book is pretty good recovery. The idea of doing intervals as I understand it is to increase your heart’s capacity for work. So basically you stress yourself beyond what you’d normally do for brief periods to increase your hearts ability to work and recover. The idea being that you’ll see a quicker improvement in your overall fitness versus just running (walking, cycling, swimming, etc) at a steady pace. So while I try to see how I’m doing by running a 5K straight, I also try to mix it up with interval training to try to make those improvements. I think I’m seeing that now. After getting done on the treadmill, Teri and I walked/sprinted the track for a bit and called it a night.

Here’s a picture from the Tour De Pierce on Sunday, courtesy of Steve:

Congrats everyone, you all did great on your respective rides! Next year we’re all doin’ the 50! 🙂