Yes, I love speed work. Well, I love it after it's over.

Yesterday I cross-trained like a fiend.  16.5 miles on the bike followed by 40 minutes of upper-body weight work (lifting heavy), and then wrapped up with 10 minutes of abs/core work.

It's nice that I have the time to leisurely work out for 2 hours a day now.  Although I think I went a little too heavy on the weights, seeing as I haven't been lifting consistently for a few weeks.  My entire upper body is quite sore this morning, including my armpits.  It's the chest work that always nails me the worst.

I have to say that I am really starting to enjoy the cycling, even though yesterday we had some gloomy rainy weather through which I was pedaling.  I am still experimenting with the gears, and finally found a combo that had me cruising quite comfortably at around 17 mph.  Let me tell you that is much much much faster than I used to go on my old Target special.  The road bike has been a very nice cross-training/duathlon investment.

Because the legs were feeling good after yesterday's cross-training (active recovery?), I decided to do some speed work this morning.  I grabbed my favorite half-marathon training plan and decided to do the week one intervals (1 x 1200, 2 x 800, 4 x 400).  So, I grabbed my new spotted cow running shorts and headed outside.

Testing these babies out for Ragnar Chicago!

I love speed work.  Specifically, I love doing short intervals.  Why?  Let me count the ways:

• Running fast is fun.  Reminds me of all the impromptu races we used to "organize" in the neighborhood as a kid.
• It helps me nail down the more rapid turnover you need to do faster running. You gotta get your legs used to the rhythm of faster running.
• It challenges me to challenge myself (Does that make sense? Probably not.).  I always come out on the other side of speed work feeling triumphant, not beaten like I do sometimes with tempos.
• I feel like I run more efficiently and with better form when running faster.  Sometimes when I'm injured and do faster running, the injury starts going away rather than getting worse.  My body is weird like that.
• The return on investment is huge.  Once, when I trained for a 10K in which the training included lots of crazy speed work, I didn't run it as fast as I wanted to run it (It was freaking cold.  February in Illinois, you know).  However, about 3 weeks afterwards I ran a 5K and PRd the freaking thing with a pace that my brain thought was insane but my body now found pretty comfortable.  It takes a long time to see the benefits, but if you are doing this consistently (and safely by not sprinting on every single interval), you will see huge gains.

Now if I can only find the joy in tempo work....for my next round of marathon training, we're going to work on mixing up the longer-distance speed work.  Doing an 8.5 mile tempo every Thursday will drive me more bonkers than I already am.

On the weight front today, I was 146.2.  Down from yesterday, but I did fit nicely into a size 4 pair of shorts this morning (I have been a size 6 as of late), so I'm feeling pretty good about that.  I am also feeling good about a half marathon being held in South Bend, IN this weekend that I just signed up to run yesterday. I want to do my long run in a race atmosphere this weekend as a part of my reverse taper up to my Ragnars.  Impulsive?  Absolutely.  Crazy because I have to run a Ragnar the next week?  Quite possibly.

But will I have fun crossing the finish line (no matter what my time) at the 50 yard line of the Notre Dame stadium?  You better freaking believe it.