Yesterday after work I had the best run that I’ve had in a long time.  It’s also the furthest I’ve run since the stupid hip injury, 7.1 whopping miles 🙂  My coach had me do a workout focused on speed – 1 mile warmup, 4 minutes at 5k pace, 2 minutes recovery, 4 minutes at 5k, 2 minutes recovery….etc, and thought I was going to throw up several times during the run!  And of course every time (or at least it seemed) the pace picked up for the 4 minute speed interval, I would be running up a hill.  There were downhills, but man, it seemed like a lot of sprinting up-hills.  This run was also a ‘run for time’ rather than run x number of miles, so I was surprised I managed to run 7.1 miles in 60 minutes, a 8:27 pace!  Not super speedy, but I’m slowly getting my speed back and it feels good.  My hips were a bit grumpy by the last mile, but other than that, not too bad.  I did lots of stretching afterwards and plan to foam roll tonight which should also help.

After being surprised by my overall pace and finishing feeling good (no puking occurred) I realized that this is one of the reasons why I hired a coach – not only to plan my workouts so I don’t die while trying to finish IMAZ, but to also push me so I can get stronger and improve.  I doubt myself a lot when reading what she has on my training schedule, but she knows my ability based on past workouts so I need to trust the plan and go with it.

Off to do my run (2mi)-ride (45min on trainer)-run(1mi) workout!  This warmer weather we are *finally* having seems to really help with motivation (it’s 54 and sunny out, at this point with the weather we’ve had recently, 54 is considered ‘warm’ in my book) , I think spring is finally here!  Hooray!