Wednesday Progressive intervals - 9 miles total

This workout kicked my butt today. Another summer morning with 79 degree temperature and 90% humidity. I did a 3 mile warmup and drills and a few strides before the workout. The workout was 30 minuets of repeat loops of about .55 - .6 miles with about a 2 minute rest in between. I didn't have my garmin, but based on the times and effort we were running, I'm pretty sure the distance was in that window for each loop. The goal of the workout was to run each one faster than the previous one. Andrew and Mike and John and I ran together for most of the workout. The first one was relatively easy and slow paced as we didn't want to go out too hard and we ran it in 3:51. We weren't that tired so we only took 1:30 rest. We picked the pace up quite a bit on the second one and hit 3:31 and started taking the full 2 minutes rest. We ran the 3rd one in 3:21, but I could tell that it was going to be tough for the rest of the workout. It was so humid and miserable out, I was drinking about 2 small cups of water on each rest break. I felt a little better on the 4th repeat and we dropped the time by about another 10 seconds to 3:11. I wasn't breathing all that hard, but my legs felt really heavy and I didn't know how much quicker I could go. I pushed the 5th one pretty hard and dropped the time by another 7 seconds down to 3:04, but I was done at that point. We had enough time to get one more in, but my stomach was having issues with all the water I had been drinking and I was throwing up in the bushes when Andrew and Mike took off on the last one. Since I knew I had a 3 mile cooldown ahead of me and my legs were already pretty tired, I decided not to do a 6th one. I guess I just need to stay better hydrated ahead of the workout and not drink as much during the workout.

Other than losing all the water I'd been drinking and not running the 6th repeat it was a pretty good workout. I was able to consistently increase the pace and I didn't feel like I was killing myself. I've gotten to the phase where I am trying to start increasing my mileage and build up a bigger base so I don't feel like I really need to push myself to the limits doing speedwork. I like doing the hard workouts because they break up the monotony of doing lots of miles, but with no races on the horizon I don't expect to be doing a lot of really high intensity workouts for a while.