Tough training, 4x3km…

Biggest running workout this year. Man, it was tough. 4x 3km with a 4 min rest between each rep. That’s right! 3km of hard running at a time! Pretty hard to keep moving at that pace for such a long distance but this is the stuff that pays off when my long distance (21.1k and up) races come up. Beat my prescribed target time of 11:48 per rep with a blazing 11:17 – 11:19 the first 3 then a 11:11 for my last. I lost a couple seconds because of the snow on the ground (yeah, we had a snow storm 20 April!) so I think I could have done a big better. Oh well, very happy with training this week. Intervals on Tuesday also went extremely well and today was great because, well, it’s all done and I can relax a bit.

Here I am stretching a bit at home after I finished. Pebbles decided to get in on it too!

** By the way, it is not recommended to stretch BEFORE a workout. In fact stretching will decrease your performance as you are telling your muscles to relax and kinda “fall asleep”. The best way to warm up is to do dynamic movements the same or similar to your activity to get your body warm and your muscles ready (I warm up with a 30 min run before interval training). Stretching afterwards is optional. In fact most of the time I don’t do it but today it felt good. Stretching is great to improve flexibility but each stretch has to be held about 1-1.5 min to have an effect and again, not before your activity. Don’t stretch too hard after your workout as your muscles are already warm and flexible. Going too hard could actually cause damage at that point.