An attempt at interval(s)

I hate the day after my stretch at work. I'm exhausted and all turned around and feel incredibly lazy. I was not made for midnights my friends. This is why I'm excited that I am moving to a day/night rotating shift later in August. I will work 3 weeks of day shift and one week (or weekend as I'll plan it) of night shift. Since PJ works nights, it will definitely alter our lives, but I think once I feel straightened out and on a "normal" schedule it will all work itself out.

So on to what I've done since I woke up at...7pm. Not a whole lot! Since I posted early this morning that I was going to run today I couldn't wimp out. As much as I wanted to just sit on the couch all night long, I made a commitment to myself. That being said...I also waited until the very last minute to get down to it. At 8:30pm I had a choice to make...outside or gym. I HATE the treadmill. I'll use it when it's really, really, hot out; but I'm not a fan. At 8:30 tonight the sun was just starting to go down and it was drizzling outside. So...treadmill or rainy run?

I chose rainy run. Last week I drove around my entire block and clocked it in at 1 mile exactly. So with that in mind I decided to run laps around the block so that if it started to pour or if it just got to dark I could come back in. I ran a warm up lap and saw it was getting dark pretty quickly so instead of running an easy 4 miles, I changed to some speedwork. This is an area I need a lot of work on. I tend to wimp out early and have a hard time pushing myself. So after the warm up mile, I ran 800 meters (1/2mile) at a pretty hard effort. It ended up being a 11:02 pace which I'm pretty happy with. I recovered for the remaining 800 meters. By this time I was rounding my house again and it started really raining. And it was dark. And I'm kind of a wimp. So I called it quits for the night.

All in all - 2 miles in today with one interval. Next time I'm going to allow for more time and do a little more research into interval training and try, try again.

Tomorrow is my long run. I'm getting up early (for me) to go walk with a friend and her newborn in the park and then have some lunch, so my run will be later in the day. Here's to hoping it cools off tomorrow evening!!