Mile Repeats - LOVE

Yesterday I had one of the toughest intervals sessions ever. I was excited by the thought of completing it but also this sense of holy shit - Can I do this?

I think one thing that helped me manage this pre-workout mental game was the fact that I love mile repeats. Mile repeats are my favorite workouts. So when Jeff sent me the workout I was like LOVE but shit what are these paces he wants me to hit.

3 mile W/U, 6:50, 6:40, 6:30, 6:20, Last one fast as I can , 2 mile C/D

I realize that sometimes why I am successful in workouts where the assign paces are aggressive is because I don't fear them or come to the workout thinking it is just crazy but my thoughts are mostly of well yes this seems tough but lets just see what I can do and if Jeff assigned it he must think I can do it so here goes nothing. I than take each interval one at a time. Only thinking about the mile I am in and not what I still need to do but solely focusing on the mile before me. Relaxing and staying calm in the moment. Now if I could do in a race setting...ah!! That is where I want to be at to relax, stay calm and focus & curious in a race setting.

Yesterday I ran this workout on the treadmill and I felt solid and strong. The first 2 actually felt relatively easy. I keep thinking wow for 6:50 & 6:40 to feel relatively easy to achieve without laboring - wow, awesome. Even the 6:30 was not a struggle so I knew I could manage the last 2 miles. The 6:20 started to test me a bit and I worked to just to relax and stay calm but I definitely wasn't going anaerobic which made me feel really happy. I was hoping to hit 6:00 for the last one but half through the last one running at 6:11 pace, I started to feel the pain or rather discomfort that you feel in the final mile of a race. I knew if it pressed the pace the wheels might come off before I hit the .75 mark so I held tight at 6:11 & worked at staying relaxed, once I hit the .80 I pressed the pace a couple marks up and finished the last one at 6:09.

So workout was a success and I am so super pleased with the progress this workout shows. While I have not had a race to prove my fitness gains. I realized I am not in the season to see the results of my hard work, I am in the season of sowing seeds. You can not sow and reap in the same season. Trusting that you are sowing some of the finest seeds brings satisfication that when it is time to harvest - it will be a season of an abundance.