I didn't get to get in a run last Monday because Mark got called in to work - but I was back out there today!

There was this new article in Runners World magazine that referred to a recent study showing that veteran runners who followed a 30-20-10 interval run improved their 5k time by 4%... which is close to 1 minute off of their times. The study was supporting the fact that these runners could run less overall mileage with this training plan and still improve their times. That sounded great to me since I don't get to run as frequently or as far as I have in the past.

Basically the training plan has you do 3 parts - Warm up, 30-20-10, rest intervals.

1.) Warm up - 1 mile jog, easy pace.

2.) 30-20-10 - 30 second jog, 20 second training pace, 10 second sprint. Immediately repeat this cycle 4 more times for a total of 5 repeats.

3.) Rest Interval - Jog for 2 minutes and then repeat step 2 two or three more times.

In the allotted time I give myself to run (which is about 30 minutes, so I can also get home and maybe do some core work and shower before Reaghan gets up from her nap) I was able to get in 2 1/2 cycles. So the first two cycles I did the full 5 repeats, but the last cycle I only got in 3 repeats before I made it back home.

The first cycle wasn't too hard and the repeats seemed to go by really fast! But by the end of the 2nd cycle I was struggling haha. I don't know about you, but I'm always self conscious when doing sprint repeats just running around the neighborhood - I'm sure people are wondering what I'm doing! (...then again, people probably aren't paying any attention to me at all...) The loop that I do is about 2.9 miles and during this workout I finished it in 27:45. Next time I'll run a little bit further to make it 3.1 miles (5k) and see if my time starts improving!

The only down side to this 30-20-10 thing - it was super hard to run with Piper! She didn't really understand why we were suddenly running fast and then slow and then fast and then slow. I think she was getting annoyed that I would pull her up short to slow down after only a 10 second sprint. haha poor girl. But she made it!