Speed

How's your Saturday? It's raining cats and dogs in good ol' cowtown today, so I'm checking items off my to do list. My awesome hubby is sleeping the day away, Eli is snoozing too, and Darius and I are chillin'. While he watched "Gnomeo and Juliet" (with Daddy before he went back to bed) I snuck in a run - nothing like a run to kick off a weekend! While on the treadmill yesterday I decided to work on my speed. I mean, I've got the endurance going for me (hello half marathon training!) but I really want to cut down my time on all my distances. Do you want to know the secret to a faster race time? It's quite simple: run faster. Genius right?! But seriously, that is the way to a faster time,and there are many ways to approach this (interval training, hill sprints, cadence drills, etc) so I've been increasing my speed in intervals, which slowly raises my 'easy' pace. I don't know if that describes what I'm doing so well, so let me give you an example:
after completing a warm up, increase your speed to a comfortable pace. Now, slowly raise your speed, maintaining each pace for at least thirty seconds before increasing again. When you feel a need for a break (I don't set a time on this, as the goal is to just keep raising the speed the entire run) lower you pace by 0.3-0.5mph (i.e. from 7.5mph down to 7.0-7.2mph) and maintain for a minute before resuming your slowly climbing speed. By using this method yesterday I reached 9.0mph (a 6:38min/mile pace!) and today I reached 9.2mph. Here's the breakdown for my workout:

Treadmill
Incline: 1.5%
Warm up: 3 minutes
Cool down: 3 minutes
Total time: 23:00 minutes
Total distance: 2.34 miles
Speed range: 6.6-9.2mph

Followed by: 1-2-3-4-5 Burpee Bow Jumps
           15-15-15-15-15 Bicycle Crunch

and stretching!

Another day down on my sweat challenge - and I feel great! Have you been sweating out in June? Are there any obstacles you've had to overcome to keep up with the challenge? What has been your favorite part so far?