60 degrees in January

I don't think I am going to get any sympathy about running outside in the temperatures we've had this week. On Tuesday night it was around 60 degrees. I can't really complain about that! I was planning on putting on a long sleeve shirt over the tank top when I got to the coffee shop meeting place, but I got there too late. Everyone was leaving when I arrived. Oh well. It actually wasn't cold in a tank top in shorts. My wrists were cold, but that was about it.


During the run, we worked on effort levels. The theory is that there are 4 effort levels (E1, E2, E3, & E4). E2 is supposed to the comfortable pace where you can still talk and run. E3 is a little more challenging, your breathing should be a little harder. E4 is all out. You shouldn't be able to talk more than a word or two when you are in E4. E1 is a nice, slow pace where you can recover from harder running.

We did some drills where we alternated between running E4 and E1. First there was a nice normal warmup lap in E2, and then the hard running began. We did about a minute or two in E4, and then a minute or two in E1. This went on for about an hour, and I was really thirsty afterwards (and tired). I slept like a baby that night.