I Thought I Was Fast Before…

I coerced Elaine and Deb into doing a speed workout with me today.

Last week I started doing 1/4 mile sprints at Griggs Reservoir. That first day I did 6 reps. This week was a little harder — the asphalt was hot, my shins were really tight and there was a little too much car traffic. We ended up doing only 4 reps.

We started with a slow 15:08 warm-up mile, then did our sprints: 2:57, 3:08, 3:11, 3:07. Does it make sense that our first 1/4 mile would have been 11:48 if we kept it up for a whole mile?! The second rep would be 12:32?!! Geez! Is it really possible that I could have been moving that fast? That is quite a bit faster than what I was last week. No wonder my shins were sore!

Afterward, we started out doing a one-mile cool down. After walking half a mile, we decided to go a little farther to make our total cool down closer to almost 1.5-miles.

I’m pretty excited I was able to walk so fast! I felt stiff and my shins were sore for most of the sprinting. During the last rep, I tried to relax a little and worked on being more “smooth.” I felt a whole lot better, but still had a little shin pain.

Total mileage was a little over 3 miles and we finished our workout in exactly one hour.
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Note to me: Temps in the mid-70s, but it was hotter on the asphalt. I wore the Chinese racewalking shoes I use for speed, shorts and a technical shirt. Wish I had worn a tank. For the first 3 laps, I had intense shin pain, and just could not make my legs go faster. Felt stiff and uncomfortable trying to go faster. We took 3-min breaks between reps mostly because of my shins. Tried stretching in between, but it didn’t seem to work.

Hills tomorrow.

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Comments

July 22, 2009 at 5:05 am

What an awesome work out. Well done.

I used to get very bad shin pain so much so that I stopped race walking for 2 months and ran instead. It was due to my calfs not being developed enough and my shins were over developed. But I must say that I swear by massage. I got my hubby to massage my shins every night for a month. It hurt so bad at the time, but it helped to stretch the sheth of the shin and pull the muscle fibres apart. Well thats how my physio described it. It does work, it just hurts lots as it has to be firm.

Keep up the walking .. you are doing great.



July 22, 2009 at 8:56 pm

I’ve been trying to do shin strengthening exercises to be proactive. But I really like the idea of getting my husband to give me massages! Thanks for the info!

Cindi



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