Tempo Training in the Stormy Clouds

So, Jodi sent me this link and tells me that we will be doing this thing they called Tempo Training. It's to help build up your speed by basically running hard for three minutes and light jogging for one minute. Sounds easy enough, WRONG! I will say that Jodi wasn't as evil as she could have been. I mean, she could have forced me to keep on going just like the training said, but then, I may have died. I certainly couldn't breathe.

I got there alittle early and she got there alittle late. All day, it's been a monsoon around the Houston area, but my little area had scary clouds and little bark. As I'm waiting for her, I see the clouds getting darker and scarier, but luckily, it only cooled the weather and didn't storm down on us like the next Noah flood.

Once Jodi got there, we did some light stretching. Note to self, if you are doing tempo training for the first time, stretch out your calves like alot. Not just alittle, but alot. My calves hurt now even though I stretched them out really well after our workout. So, we start the hard run for three minutes, which is the fastest that I have ever run for a long period of time. The three minutes couldn't come fast enough. In fact, it felt like 10 minutes. I'm huffing and puffing trying to calm my breathing down just a wee bit. We get to the light jog for a minute, finally. Then, we start the run. I swear that three minutes felt like an hour. I somehow made it, but this time, I had to walk for 90 seconds. I just couldn't anymore. I could barely continue you on and we weren't halfway done. We went over the 90 seconds, but then we picked up the hard run again. It didn't last long, because I just couldn't. However, instead of following the plan, Jodi tailored it the more out of shape person plan. Instead of doing three minutes for each hard run, we did less time, but more runs. We did about four more of those and I thought I was going to not make it. Overall, it was a total of one and half miles.

Stretch! Stretch! Stretch!

Jodi and I have put this Tempo Training in our plan and will probably do this every Thursday. Oh happy happy joy joy! If you can guess that reference, you get a cookie.

Tonight, we are going to run the Woodlands 5k run for practice so that I can see what that's like before my official first 5K next Saturday.