Quarter mile intervals on the road

Today I replicated my track workout from last Saturday on the roads, just to see if it would work. It did! 1 mile warmup and then 4 intervals, go faster every even-numbered quarter, jog the odd-numbered quarters (and then a bit of slow recovery jog at the end). The red line is the heart rate, blue is the speed.

The Garmin picked up the pace increase during the intervals a bit better than it did on the track - the readings from there are a bit scrambled, although my final 5K finishing time was nearly identical, within 20 seconds.

That's probably my last significant run before this Saturday, when I'm doing the National Half Marathon in Washington, DC. I'll let the legs rest up. They'll need it! This one is a bit hillier than my last half marathon from a couple weeks ago, plus it's going to be substantially warmer on race day. Plus not having my two escorts to draft behind (they are running it, but probably at their much faster race pace), and my finishing time is likely to be a bit slower on this half. Even though this is the first one for which I actually had to submit a qualifying time!!!

Plus my babysitter won't be here on Thursday, unfortunately. She's going to Key West for a couple of days! I almost fired her on the spot out of sheer envy. Instead I gave her an extra twenty bucks just for fun. If she were just a couple years older I would have told her not to drink it all in one place.