The Warhurst (Warhurts!)

Our group workout last night was called the Warhurst, named after Ron Warhurst, the track coach at the University of Michigan. It involved running a mile at tempo pace followed immediately by an 800 on the track at 10k pace...repeat 3 times.

This workout is hard because not only are the paces and distances challenging, but our mile repeat involved running up the hill at Veterans Drive. We were supposed to use Ruth's splits for us during this workout. The problem with that is her idea of my tempo mile was 8:16...16 seconds slower than what I consider my marathon pace. I have been determined this summer to not do any workout pace over 8 minute miles.

I went into the miles trying to do 8:00 each time. My splits were 8:00, 8:11, and 8:09, but I honestly thought the effort was much harder than that. After each mile we jogged into the track area and did our 800 at 10k pace. My splits were 3:41, 3:39, 3:35. I was happy with those, and they actually felt much easier than the mile.


I had resigned myself to the fact that maybe the heat zapped some of my mile energy last night or that maybe the hill on Veterans affected me a little more than I wanted to admit. UNTIL>>I found out from folks wearing Garmins that the mile was a little long. I verified this morning on the Gmap pedometer that it was actually 1.04 miles. It doesn't seem like a lot, but when I proportionately modify my times I get 7:41, 7:52, 7:50 for my mile splits.

Yay!!! I knew I felt like I was pushing harder than 8 minutes on those miles.

Way to go me!