Pick-up Artist

So I have a new workout in this month's plan called a pick up. According to the experts (not me), these are kind of like a fartlek. It teaches you to change speeds frequently during the course of a run. It works on your anaerobic energy systems. It also pus some organaztion into a run that could turn out to be stale without the pickups. You can perform the pickups whenever you like during the run, but always make sure you've been running for a t least 5-10 minutes before you start. You decide when to do each pick up and when you've recovered you pick it up again.

Today's pick up workout was supposed to be 4 miles with 8 30 second pick ups. I did not follow the rules. I started my pick ups as instructed after 5 minutes of running and was done with the 8 by mile 2.5. As these are not supposed to be boring runs I decided to add in a couple more.

Overall pace for the 4 miles was 7:52, broken out as follows:

(Lap # = distance/pace/bpm)

Lap 1 = .5 mi/10:11/124
Lap 2 = .14 mi/6:23/124
Lap 3 = .17 mi/8:52/124
Lap 4 = 459 ft/6:27/165
Lap 5 = .11 mi/8:25/175
Lap 6 = 456 ft/6:00/177
Lap 7 = .2 mi/8:33/178
Lap 8 = 454 ft/6:04/177
Lap 9 = .11 mi/8:47/178
Lap 10 = 420 ft/6:14/179
Lap 11 = .13 mi/8:38/179
Lap 12 = 518 ft/6:00/179
Lap 13 = .14 mi/7:31/163
Lap 14 = 479 ft/6:25/177
Lap 15 = .18 mi/7:40/179
Lap 16 = 395 ft/6:47/177
Lap 17 = .21 mi/8:09/178
Lap 18 = 345 ft/6:04/178
Lap 19 = .52 mi/8:24/181
Lap 20 = .11 mi/4:41 (?)/183
Lap 21 = .8 mi/7:40/185

Total = 4 mi/7:52/169

(I think I failed to stop my Garmin during the warm-up so maybe my overall pace was in fact faster. I can tell you that I was not running 10:00 miles during my warm up, it was definitely faster - downhill and everything. But then there is that weird lap 20 that doesn't make sense. Whatever! I can't analyze this any further...)

I didn't do any fancy programming on the Garmin, so I decided to just hit the lap button each time I did a pick up and try to go exactly 30 seconds. Several times I went over 30 and a couple I went under. Oh well. My pick ups were supposed to be in Zone 7, 7:00/miles or faster and I definitely hit that.

I ended up finishing at the waterfront and decided to just walk the rest (half mile or so) back to my place. It was nice to just walk outside, I don't do that often enough. In fact, this was the 1st time I'd been out today.

Sun, Mon and Tuesday I took my vitamins. I also did TP on Sunday and am going to do it tonight (missed Monday) and did at least 15 minutes of stretching each day since Sunday. I guess it is not that hard to do.

Motivation pre-run has been lacking. My eating is not good - too much salty, snacky crap laying around. Some times it is harder to control this so I either have to try harder or just let it ride and know that it'll be better in a few days?

I have some good track workouts (scheduled for Thursdays) coming up. I am really excited to kick this shit into gear. I want to get the most out of it that I can. THAT MEANS RUN FAST!