Well, today marked my first ‘hard’ run to prepare for the half-marathon.

My runner’s world schedule indicated it as ‘speedwork’, which to me means long intervals It’s mile repeats, a workout I’ve been excited to try since it was featured in Runner’s World this month.

Here is what was scheduled: Speedwork: 5 mi, including warm, 2 * 1600m in 8:39 with 800m jogs.

8:39 miles? Sounds scary! But, I knew I could get close, and I figured if I made my 800 jog in between slow enough to recover, I could probably do it.

Since I was running on the treadmill and not on a track, I went with 1600 = 1 mile and 800m = .5 miles (trust me, it’s really close enough). A (not so) quick conversion shows that 8:39 for a 1600m is 8:42 for a mile.

The warm-up was started around the track at the gym as all the treadmills were in use. After 1 mile, I got a treadmill and ran another .5 mile for warm-up, figuring that being more comfortable with my warm-up was more important than a really long cool-down. And being limited by the speeds offered by the treadmill, my option was 8:41 per mile. The first one was easy. I definitely had to work at the second, but I made it through. Then did a slower .5 mile jog and a .5 mile cool-down.

Quick synopsis: 1.5 mi warm, 2 * 1 mi @ 8:41 w/ 800 jogs; .5 mi cool down (5.1 mi). Since I wasn’t on the treadmill, my Nike+ had actually registered 1.1 miles when I got on the treadmill. It’s probably actually pretty accurate since I was still about .1 miles ahead after running exactly 4 miles on the treadmill. Glad my calibration worked last night! (Of course, I happened to be on the same treadmill I calibrated on, which probably helped).

Of course, like I said yesterday, part of the hard part is making sure you do easy stuff easy. I had a little problem with this today, as I ran the last part of my cool-down much faster than I should, because I like to get used to that end-of-run kick that’s so much fun in races.

Went in the hot-tub afterward. At this point I told Chris that I really shouldn’t feel as good as I did. I really felt great about my run. It was challenging, but certainly not overly so. I didn’t get overheated or over-tired. I felt like I’d had a healthy workout. My guess is that this means I really am in as good shape as I think I am, and as I planned for in my workout schedule.